This report seems familiar, doesn’t it?

BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops hoping to directly confront al Qaeda militants in a major offensive in the Iraqi city of Baquba instead found themselves "swimming through a minefield," a senior officer said on Sunday.

The operation in and around Baquba, capital of volatile Diyala province, is in its sixth day and is a major part of one of the biggest offensives by U.S. and Iraqi forces against the Sunni Islamist group in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Some U.S. officers said they believed the initial combat phase of the offensive is nearly complete and any militants left could be confronted in the next 24 hours. Hundreds of militants were thought to be still holed up in Baquba's western districts.

But others believe many al Qaeda fighters left Baquba after getting clear signals from U.S. commanders who have said for some time that the city was high on their list of priorities.

"It's frustrating. You set up something that you know will work ... now we know that most of the al Qaeda enemy got away," said Captain Julian Kemper. "Our purpose was not to push them out somewhere else. It was to end it here."

Lieutenant-General Ray Odierno, the deputy U.S. commander in Iraq, has said there was little doubt al Qaeda knew that a major offensive was coming.

"They watched the news. They understood we had a surge, they understood Baquba was designated as a problem area," he told Pentagon journalists on Friday.

On reading about the prepared defensive belts I was reminded of Israel’s unfortunate practice run of this offensive last Summer, when Hezbollah fought the heralded “best Army in the Middle East” to an expensive draw and forced its retreat.

Granted, there are no mountains in Iraq. There are cities instead, and they canalize assaulting forces into streets rather than valleys and draws. The US forces are probably fortunate they haven’t drawn more enfilading fire from the rooftops. The patient preparation of mines and RPG points broke the back of the Israeli armor drive. A news report I saw yesterday noted that the troops had already discovered that for safety they had to proceed on foot ahead of any armor. This would expose them to gunfire ambush, though. But sticking and fighting house-to-house is not the chosen battle zone for guerrillas.

After heavy street fighting on the first day, Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Baquba has shifted to the slow and dangerous job of clearing scores of buried bombs and booby-trapped houses.

I remember reading another report that in order to progress down a street, US troops shot a line of det cord down the block to set off the mines or destroy the command wires.

Mines accomplish two goals: they attrit the enemy, and they slow his progress to a crawl.