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Marines move into Karabila; Iraqis bury dead

From CNN's Arwa Damon

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In this picture released by the U.S. Marine Corps, Iraqi soldiers and Marines hand out toys to children in Husayba.

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HUSAYBA, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi soldiers went on graveyard duty Thursday to help Iraqi civilians bury their dead in the aftermath of the U.S. Marine offensive in Husayba, near the Syrian border, as the main thrust of Operation Steel Curtain moved into Karabila to the east.

Major sweeps ended Monday inside Husayba, a town insurgents have used as a base -- and a conduit into and out of Syria.

Marines encountered little resistance -- some sporadic small arms fire -- when they reached Karabila early Thursday afternoon. They detonated a car bomb they found and a warehouse that had been wired to explode.

Operation Spear pushed through Karabila in June, when Marines freed four Iraqis -- one a border policeman -- who had been kidnapped, tortured and left chained to a wall.

Some Marines and the Iraqi army remained in Husayba, conducting "back clearing" -- returning to areas already swept to conduct patrols, execute fresh searches and talk with residents.

And the Iraqi army accompanied civilians up the road from their new base camp in the southern part of Husayba -- the most fortified part of town -- where they helped recover the body of a 10-year-old boy from the dusty rubble of a house destroyed Monday by a U.S. air strike.

He was the last of 17 victims pulled from the debris.

At least 24 civilians from four families died in air strikes Monday in a neighborhood even the residents admit has been a haven for insurgents.

"But why did they have to drop the bombs?" they asked, almost to a man -- although not on camera, fearing reprisals by the insurgents.

"I know what warfare is, and I don't understand why they had to launch so many airstrikes," said a veteran of the Iraqi army from the Saddam Hussein era, a man in a wheelchair.

The U.S. military said it takes "careful and deliberate actions to minimize collateral damage" and only uses airstrikes when they determine they can't accomplish their aims any other way.

And, they said, they won't deliberately drop a bomb on a building if they have hard evidence there are civilians inside.

But there apparently were civilians in at least two of the homes that took direct hits, and neighborhood residents say there was no insurgent fighting from either of them.

The residents took a CNN crew Wednesday to both houses. In one, they saw the bodies of seven people -- including a 3- and 5-year-old sister and brother and their parents. The Iraqi army helped carry the bodies of the dead to the cemetery and dug the graves.

Two other members of the family -- a 17-year-old girl and her 35-year-old brother -- were wounded and transported out by U.S. Marines. The bombs hit the house, neighbors said, about 3 p.m. Monday -- while a bitter firefight took place some blocks away.

An airstrike struck the other house an hour later, killing 17 members of three related families, neighbors said -- and was likely meant for the house next door, where three men with AK-47s had been firing on U.S. troops from the roof.

The CNN crew didn't linger Wednesday at the second house, where 20 to 30 very angry residents -- cursing the Marines and the Iraqi army -- dug through the tangled remains of the house in search of the dead.

But later in the night, an elderly man who was a neighborhood leader came to the military base 600 yards down the road to say they'd found 16 victims -- and to apologize for the residents' aggressive behavior.

He asked for the Iraqi army's help burying the dead. He told CNN that the dead were mainly women and children -- all but one of the families' adult men were out of the city working farmlands they owned in the north.

Those men would return to no home and to ten dead children. The children ranged from one month old to 10 years old, he said. One mother died holding her child in her arms.

CNN returned to the scene Thursday morning with the Iraqi soldiers who carried out the grim task of burying the dead. In anguish, the Iraqis pulled back shroud after shroud to show the team that the victims were nearly all women and children. They asked, "Why?" and they cried.

Heartbreaking scenes of grief played out in southern Husayba as major fighting came to an end. "Operation Steel Curtain," as it is dubbed, apparently succeeded in wresting control of the town from the insurgents -- at least for now.

But the Iraqi people in the town had mixed feelings -- glad the insurgents had been moved out and that U.S. and Iraqi forces were on hand. But at the same time, they worried about a new Iraqi base just down the road.

The insurgents will fire mortars on it, the Iraqi army veteran in the wheelchair said, and their mortars aren't accurate. Plus, he said, the Iraqi civilians are worried about a military response to an insurgent attack.

U.S. troops are still finding roadside bombs as they patrol the town, Davis said. They are destroying those in place along with any of their own 500-pound bombs that didn't explode. They've also set up a "C-MOC" -- Civilian-Military Operations Center -- to aid civilians.

It is an uneasy peace in Husayba.

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