A mop up offensive for Diyala area

Reuters/Washington Post:

...

The military said 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops were involved in Operation Lightning Hammer against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda militants in the fertile crescent of the Diyala River which flows from the north into the Tigris near Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi soldiers started the operation with a late-night air assault. Its focus was militants who fled an earlier crackdown in the provincial capital Baquba.

"Our main goal with Lightning Hammer is to eliminate the terrorist organizations ... and show them that they truly have no safe haven -- especially in Diyala," Major-General Benjamin Mixon, U.S. commander in northern Iraq, said in a statement.

The operation was described as part of a larger countrywide Operation Phantom Strike, which U.S. forces announced on Monday.

They have so far given few details of Phantom Strike. But U.S. military offensives over recent months have been under way in the Tigris and Diyala valleys north of Baghdad and in the Euphrates valley south of the capital.

...


This appears to be an effort to keep the enemy on its heels and reeling from the effects of continuous attacks. don't give him time to catch his breath or plan new attacks. the reduction in violence suggest that it is working.

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