U.S., Iraqi troops launch Tal Afar offensive
 |  Exclusive CNN images show U.S. troops in tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles in Tal Afar on Tuesday. |
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 Iraqis in Tal Afar want the military to crush the insurgency.
 Tal Afar is one of the most dangerous places in Iraq.
 A 503,000-square-foot underground insurgent hideout.
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TAL AFAR, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. and Iraqi troops on Tuesday launched an offensive against insurgents in the northwestern city of Tal Afar -- not far from the Syrian border.
"Dozens of tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and Apache helicopters have moved in to a neighborhood in the town which is thought to be a stronghold of insurgents," said senior Baghdad correspondent Jane Arraf, who is embedded with U.S. troops.
One American soldier and four insurgents have been killed in the operation, Arraf said. U.S. and Iraqi forces have detained 23 suspected insurgents.
Some 4,000 U.S. troops moved into the Tal Afar area in recent weeks.
Soldiers from the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, along with hundreds of Iraqi Army soldiers, began the operation in a particularly violent neighborhood just before dawn.
The troops moved door to door on narrow streets looking to capture or kill insurgents who have carried out attacks in the city.
One of the targets is a cell blamed for the kidnappings and beheadings of two people. Troops are also hunting foreign fighters; the Syrian border is about 40 miles from the town.
Arraf saw Iraqi troops climbing a wall at one house during a raid of a city block. At some of the houses, troops have blown open the doors to get inside.
There did not appear to be heavy resistance, but scattered gunfire and mortars could be heard, Arraf said.
The offensive follows a weekend tribal meeting in which the leaders urged troops to come in and essentially level part of the city where insurgents are hiding. (Full story)
However, the U.S. military says the push is more of a precision-style show of force -- planned long before that meeting -- not a mission to destroy houses and neighborhoods.
The military also hopes to find allies in the neighborhood and identify people who might be friendly to U.S. forces.
The Tal Afar operation follows two offensives in May when troops conducted Operation Matador near Qaim along the Euphrates River and Operation New Market in Haditha, both designed to thwart suicide car bombings and other attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere.
Currently, Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. troops, are embarking on a major crackdown in Baghdad called Operation Lightning -- a citywide dragnet that has netted hundreds of arrests.
Car bombs kill 14
A series of car bombs in the Hawija area near Kirkuk Tuesday killed 14 people, including four Iraqi soldiers, an Iraqi Army official told CNN.
The blasts wounded 39 people -- 30 of them were civilians.
Hawija is 40 miles south of Kirkuk, which is north of the capital.
Other developments
The U.S. military on Tuesday said two Marines were killed in recent days by roadside bombs during combat near the Sunni Triangle city of Falluja, bringing the total of U.S. troop fatalities in the war to 1,673.At least 28 people -- including two police officers -- were wounded in a car bombing in Baghdad on Tuesday.Police in Baghdad said a Foreign Ministry official and an Iraqi commando were killed in separate drive-by shootings while a third shooting left an Iraqi police official critically wounded. The U.S. military said Tuesday that four guards and six detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison complex received minor injuries in a disturbance that started late Sunday. The military issued a statement saying detainees "began throwing rocks" at guards and after another detainee was caught trying to escape from the Baghdad facility.Police in Musayyab in Babil province -- which is south of Baghdad -- said they stormed a terrorist hideout in Jurf al-Sakhr on Tuesday and seized a weapons cache that included mortar rounds, rockets, fuses and small arms munitions. Iraq is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Abu Abdullah Al Shafi'i, whom they believe to be the leader of the terrorist group Ansar al Sunna.CNN's Kianne Sadeq and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
