Combat· Iraq War (Op IRAQI FREEDOM)
Imam Salah Mosque Raid
The raid on the Imam Salah mosque was one of the operations during the Battle of Najaf in which Marines and Iraqi forces moved against a mosque that the Mahdi Army had used as a strongpoint or base during the uprising.
As with other religious sites the militia exploited for military purposes, the mosque presented the Marines with the dual challenge of reducing a defended position while observing the extraordinary sensitivities of fighting in and around a place of worship in the holy city. The raid was part of the careful, politically fraught effort to root the militia out of the sites it had occupied, conducted under rules of engagement designed to avoid damage to sacred ground and the inflammation of Shia opinion. The action against the Imam Salah mosque was one of the targeted operations within the larger battle, part of the campaign to dislodge al-Sadr's fighters from their strongholds in Najaf.
Record no. 762