ON HAIFA STREET, 4+ YEARS LATER

This is from the DOD and I found these excerpts very interesting:

New Unit Starts Work to Secure Baghdad’s Haifa Street

By Sgt. Robert Yde
2nd Brigade Combat Team
1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs

FORWARD OPERATING BASE UNION III, Iraq, May 14, 2007 — After spending the majority of the month of April providing assistance in Diwaniyah, Iraq, the soldiers of 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, are back in Baghdad and focusing their attention on to their next mission – taking over operations in the Haifa Street area in Baghdad’s city center.

“It’s definitely a more challenging battlefield,” Troop A commander, Capt. Gerald Resmondo said of Haifa Street. “It’s probably the most challenging battle space or area of operations that we’ve operated in, just because of all the built-up and high-rise buildings.”

Resmondo said that right now the biggest issues residents are facing stems from a lack of electricity.

“They only have about one hour of electricity a day in the whole (area), and it’s usually early in the morning, which causes more problems such as being able to get water because electricity controls the pumps that pump the water into their storage tanks,” he explained.