anybody else notice this about major combat operations?

[NewJeffCT]

American forces also targeted militias in Kut, east of Najaf, where more than 70 people are reported killed.

US and Iraqi troops have been battling radical cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia in Najaf - about 160km (100 miles) south of Baghdad - for the past seven days.

On Thursday 2,000 US marines and 1,800 Iraqi soldiers, supported by tanks and aircraft, engaged about 1,000 insurgents near the Valley of Peace cemetery, forcing them back behind the walls of the Imam Ali shrine.

"Major operations to destroy the militia have begun," a US military spokesman said.


http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/081304Z.shtml