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. US using Fallujah intelligence to pursue rebels: Pentagon
WASHINGTON (AFP) Dec 03, 2004
US forces are using intelligence gathered from their assault on Fallujah in operations to prevent insurgents from setting up new cells around Iraq, a senior US military official said Friday.

Brigadier General David Rodriguez confirmed a New York Times report that the intelligence includes cell phone numbers and lists of families of foreign fighters who were to receive payments.

"All that ... is being analyzed right now and will be used as best we possibly can to take those cells down," he said at a Pentagon press conference.

Rodriguez said there was some evidence connecting followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant linked to beheadings of hostages and suicide bombings, to the northern city of Mosul.

"But we don't have any solid evidence that that's where Zarqawi is moving his main base or anything like that yet," he added.

Exploitation of information gathered in Fallujah was still "in the infantile stage because we have not fully looked at all the sites yet that we've secured," he said.

Nevertheless, coalition raids in an area south of Baghdad during and after the Fallujah operation sought to prevent insurgents from re-establishing themselves, he said.

"So there's several operations going on right now to prevent that from happening," he said.

He said "as these people lose this base of operation, they move to other places, which opens up intelligence opportunities for us, as well as to build up the things, the capabilities, that they lost in Fallujah."

"You know, you just can't do that without taking some risks and providing some intelligence opportunities," he said.

He said the deployment of two battalions of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division was aimed keeping the pressure on the insurgents.

The units are scheduled to begin deploying Sunday from Fort Bragg, North Carolina and to be in position in Iraq early next week in the Baghdad area, the army said.

Military officials have said the arrival of the paratroopers would free more experienced troops from the army's 1st Cavalry Division for operations against insurgents in the Baghdad area.

Besides ordering the deployment of some 1,500 paratroopers, the Pentagon announced this week it is extending tours of duty in Iraq for 10,400 other combat troops through Iraq's January elections.

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