Operation
On 5 November, Marines from 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines and 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines began their assault on insurgent-held Karabilah, and had cleared the city four days later. Then on 5 November the coalition forces began to attack the city of Husaybah and pursue any insurgents who fled Karabilah. After four more days of fighting in Husaybah, the coalition troops launched another phase of the operation into the city of Ubaydi, an insurgent haven and site of the earlier Operation Matador. The fortified city fell to coalition forces after seven days of fighting, bringing a conclusion to Operation Steel Curtain. The assault on Sadah and a small portion of Karabilah was known as "Operation: Iron Fist". The assault of Husaybah and Karabilah was "Operation: Steel Curtain". So named because the resident leader of anti-coalition forces, al-Zarqawi, said they would hold onto Husaybah with an "iron fist". Named by Coalition Commanders, "Operation Steel Curtain", was a hardened sweep and clear mission hence "steel curtain" because American and New Iraqi Army flooded the two cities, and closed and secured the objective like a curtain made of steel.
Read more about this topic: Operation Steel Curtain
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)