IRAQ: US troops call it the Jihad Superbowl - a place on the Iraq-Syria border where insurgents are strafed by helicopters. Jack Fairweather reports from al-Qa'im
By the time anyone reacted to the rocket attack, four masked men had already run 200 metres from the burning coalition vehicle.
What the attackers didn't realise was they were heading straight towards a US military checkpoint set up in an massive operation to round up insurgents on the Syrian border - while behind them surviving soldiers gave chase.
The four men were chain- gunned by an Apache attack helicopter as they lay surrounded in a bunker.
"We're calling this area the Jihad Superbowl," said Col David Teeples, who has little doubt who the 4,000 US troops are up against during Operation Rifles Blitz in the al-Qa'im border district.
"What we have here is a cancer. Foreign fighters are linking up with Saddam loyalists and planning attacks," said Col Teeples. Washington has also blamed foreign fighters smuggled across the Syrian border for the increased sophistication of anti-coalition attacks. Over three hundred have been arrested since the end of the war, some with links to al-Qaeda.
But in recent weeks senior US officers have played down the role of foreign fighters.
"We're just calling the people who are attacking Americans 'the bad guys'," said one senior officer who said that intelligence provided a far murkier picture of the resistance movement.
The resulting confusion of who is behind the attacks is one mirrored on the border The al-Qa'im district has been wracked with violence but soldiers on the ground link many of the attacks on US forces to the disruption of the cross-border smuggling trade by the increased American presence.
"It's tempting to see a foreign fighter when what is really the problem are complex motivations on the parts of Iraqis," said Maj James Gallivan, in charge of 1st Squadron of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, although he insisted there was still a strong foreign fighter presence on the ground.
But of the 40 detained after 24 hours of house-to-house searches and raiding by the 3rd ACR none were foreigners. On inspection of the bodies of the men involved in Friday night's rocket attack - in which three soldiers were wounded - all proved to be of Iraqi origin.
"The usual suspects" one soldier called the detainees as they were unhooded and led into a 2,000 capacity holding camp set up for the operation.
"It's pretty difficult to tell where a detainee might be from," said Capt Ian Blacksmith, the officer in charge of the open-air detainee camp where prisoners must keep warm in the freezing desert conditions with only a blanket. "We wait for them to volunteer the information under interrogation which they usually do after a couple of days here," he said.
But although Operation Rifles Blitz has so far only produced a handful of foreign fighters it has brought a measure of peace to the al-Qa'im district.
"Slow death", anti-American insurgents have daubed on the walls of the town of Queseba beside which one soldier wrote "slow freedom" - an equation between the two residents of the town are only too aware of.
"We desperately want our freedom back," said Emad Khalid, a businessman whose trade has suffered since movement to and from Queseba was stopped for the duration of the operation. "But we are happy to co-operate with the Americans if they can bring us peace," he said.
Locals are given a $20 note as a "sweetener" for the inconvenience of being searched and a further $20 dollars for each gun handed in.
The incentive led to groups of Iraqis offering up their homes for inspection.
"We've got a really good rapport with the people here," said 2nd Lieu Todd Poindexter on patrol in the town of Sada.
"I just hope that all the smiling people who welcome us in the morning are not the ones who go out at night and try and shoot us."