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Attack videos appear on Web

From National Security Correspondent David Ensor

A video made available on the Internet apparently shows an attack on an American Humvee in Baghdad.
A video made available on the Internet apparently shows an attack on an American Humvee in Baghdad.

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Amateur videos showing attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq are showing up on Arabic Web sites.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Video clips showing what appears to be attacks on American forces in Iraq have begun appearing on an Arab Web site at Islamtoday.net.

The videotapes are thought to be used as a "propaganda and recruiting tool" to draw Saudi recruits to Iraq to fight against Americans, analysts say.

One video, filmed from a nearby parked car, apparently shows an American Humvee blowing up, on what the Web site says is a Baghdad street. The explosion is replayed several times in a row for maximum impact.

Another shows a Humvee, in what the Web site says is the Sunni neighborhood of Adamiyah in Baghdad, coming under machine gun fire.

A Central Command spokesman had no comment on the tapes. Other officials say they will be analyzed for any intelligence clues they provide on the attackers' methods.

The tapes were found by Saudi dissidents on a Web site run by a Saudi cleric and started appearing in the past week.

Ali al-Ahmed of the Saudi Institute in Washington, an independent human rights group, said the tapes were a "propaganda and recruiting tool" being used to try to convince young Saudis to go to Iraq to help insurgents fighting U.S. forces there.

Saudi officials could not be reached for comment.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, has begun leveling houses and buildings used by suspected Iraqi guerrilla fighters in a new tactic which is part of a more aggressive strategy aimed at crushing the anti-American insurgency, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

The officials rejected any comparison to the tactics employed by the Israeli military in the West bank and Gaza, saying the U.S. actions are not aimed at punishing sympathizers, but rather are aimed at eliminating legitimate military targets. (Full story)

Israel Defense Forces characterized its tactics in a September 30 statement: "The demolition of the houses of terrorists sends a message that anyone who participates in terrorist activity will pay a price for their actions."

"Coalition forces are continuing to target any building that may be used by anti-coalition forces to plan attacks, produce weapons or harbor insurgents," a Pentagon spokesman told CNN.

"These measures are not punitive in nature, they are strictly targeting those responsible for recent attacks against the coalition and the infrastructure used repeatedly to sustain those attacks," he said.


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