BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden truck into a sandbagged wall surrounding a police headquarters in northern Iraq on Friday, killing five American soldiers and two Iraqi policemen in the single deadliest attack against U.S. forces in more than a year, the U.S. military and Iraqi police said.
A sixth American soldier and 17 Iraqi policemen were wounded in the blast that took place near the national police headquarters in southwestern Mosul — Iraq's third-largest city and al-Qaida's last urban stronghold.
Suicide bombings — a hallmark of al-Qaida's attack style — continue to threaten the city, which U.S. troops must leave by June 30 under an agreement with the Iraqis. The approaching deadline has raised fears about what will happen after American soldiers depart.
Lt. Col. Michael Stuart, chief of U.S. operations in Tikrit, an Iraqi city north of Baghdad, said the target was the Iraqi national police complex in Mosul and not the U.S. patrol. He said the American patrol just happened to be on the same street when the attack occurred.
"It was just bad timing," Stuart told The Associated Press.
Friday's blast was the deadliest single bombing attack in more than a year. The U.S. military said that the last time five U.S. soldiers were killed in an attack was when a suicide bomber targeted an American patrol in Baghdad on March 10, 2008.
A suicide car bomb struck a U.S. patrol in Mosul on Feb. 9, killing four American soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter. Four U.S. soldiers were also killed Jan. 26 when two helicopters collided over the northern city of Kirkuk.
Friday's suicide bomber, who was driving a truck filled with grain, made a sharp turn as he approached the police complex, then rammed his truck through an iron barrier, hitting a sandbagged wall beyond it and detonating his vehicle near the station's main building, Iraqi police said.
The blast shook the entire complex and badly damaged nearby buildings, witnesses and police said.
A policeman, who identified himself as Abu Mohammed, said he saw the truck driving behind two U.S. Humvees on the street leading to the police headquarters. The Humvees entered the complex, came to a stop, and within seconds, the truck turned and rammed the iron barrier, he said.
Iraqi police opened fire, but the truck kept moving until it reached the sandbagged wall where it detonated — just a few feet away from the Humvees, he said.
"The blast was very powerful and the situation was chaotic," he said.
The U.S. military said two people were detained in connection with the attack, which is under investigation. The names of those killed were being withheld pending notification of families.
Although U.S. combat troops have to leave of Iraqi cities by the end of June under the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that went into effect this year, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, told The Times of London this week that the American troops may have to stay in Mosul and another northern city, Baqouba, after the deadline because insurgents remain active there.
Mosul, about 225 miles (360 kilometers) north of Baghdad, had been relatively quiet in recent weeks compared to the Iraqi capital, where attacks killed at least 53 people this week.
American casualties have fallen to their lowest levels of the war since thousands of Sunnis abandoned the insurgency and U.S. and Iraqi forces routed Shiite militias in Baghdad and Basra last spring.
However, fighting continues in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq — a conflict that U.S. officials say is driven in part by ethnic rivalries between Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Many Sunni extremists are believed to have fled north after being driven from longtime strongholds in Baghdad and central Iraq.
In a separate attack on Friday, a U.S. patrol of Striker vehicles was targeted by a roadside bomb, but no one was hurt in the blast near Taji, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad, said spokesman Maj. Dave Shoupe. Taji police said eight Iraqi laborers paving a road by the site of the blast were detained for questioning.
Meanwhile, Iraqi police in the southern city of Basra said Friday they arrested 65 people in overnight raids after an attack on a U.S. convoy in the area and the kidnapping of two guards working for a local Iraqi security firm the previous day.
The arrested included 20 people who were already on a wanted list and 45 others, mostly militiamen, said the city's police spokesman Col. Karim al-Zeidi.
The U.S. military said the American convoy was hit by a roadside bomb near Basra on Thursday, but there were no casualties. Separately, al-Zeidi said two guards working for an Iraqi security firm were abducted late Thursday from their car, which was left by on the side of the road near Basra along with the guards' weapons.
Their identities and the company they worked for were not immediately known.
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Associated Press Writers Chelsea J. Carter and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
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Suicide bomb kills 5 US soldiers, 2 Iraqi police
10 Apr 2009 13:09:22 GMT
Source: Reuters
* U.S. military says five U.S. soldiers killed
* Truck exploded 50 metres short of base
(Adds detail, Interior Ministry comment)
MOSUL, Iraq, April 10 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives outside an Iraqi base in the northern city of Mosul on Friday, killing five U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi policemen, the U.S. military said.
Iraq's Interior Ministry said the authorities were forewarned of the attack but were unsure when it would happen.
U.S. and Iraqi forces opened heavy fire on the truck after it ignored a request to stop at a checkpoint on the approach to the base.
"The truck exploded 50 metres before reaching its target (the base)," Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf said, adding that only one Iraqi policeman was killed in the attack. He could not confirm the U.S. casualties.
"There was more than 1,000 kg of explosives in the truck, which levelled three buildings (near the base)," he added.
The attack was the deadliest for U.S. soldiers in Iraq for months. An insurgency led by al Qaeda and other militants has proven stubborn in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, even as the violence set off by the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 has waned elsewhere in Iraq.
Two U.S. soldiers and 20 members of the Iraqi security forces were wounded in the blast, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police said the blast wounded 70 people and destroyed five Iraqi and two U.S. armoured vehicles.
At least two people suspected of being involved in the attack were detained, and the incident is under investigation, the U.S. military said.
The number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in March was the lowest since the invasion. In February four U.S. soldiers were killed in a single attack.
At least 4,200 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the invasion.
Insurgent groups have exploited the divisions among Mosul's patchwork of Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Christians and other groups to remain effective, and are also known to retreat to hideouts in the remote and mountainous region surrounding the city. (Additional reporting by Khalid al-Ansary and Mohammed Abbas in Baghdad, Writing by Mohammed Abbas, Editing by Jonathan Wright)
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At least 70 people, many of them residents of the area, were wounded in the Mosul attack and a number of houses and businesses were severely damaged, according to Iraqi security and hospital officials.
The truck was packed with about 2,000 pounds of explosives, the Interior Ministry’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, told the state television network Iraqiya. The impact of the explosion shook buildings miles away, Mosul residents said, while a large plume of black smoke could be seen rising from the site.
Iraqi security forces rapidly sealed off the area, so details of the attack remained sketchy. Driving a dump truck, the bomber appears to have passed a number of checkpoints before finally blasting through a final checkpoint guarding a military road that leads to one of the main entrances to the base, said Maj. Derrick Cheng, a United States military spokesman in northern Iraq.
At that very moment, however, an American military convoy happened to be leaving the base for a mission inside Mosul, according to Major Cheng. The dump truck immediately came under fire from Iraqi police at the checkpoint and in guard towers around the base, as well as American soldiers in the convoy, but the bomber could not be prevented from detonating his cargo along the road, about 50 yards from the base entrance, the Iraqi police said. The road leads to the Mosul headquarters of the nearly 3,000 members of the paramilitary Iraqi national police, who were sent last fall by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to help subdue the violent city. They are being advised and backed by the American military, and their barracks are just inside the entrance where the explosion occurred, and next to the sprawling Forward Operating Base Marez, the principal base for American soldiers in Mosul.
A Saudi suicide bomber blew himself up in an American military mess hall on the base in December 2004, killing 22. Officials blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for that attack.
Major Cheng said two suspects had been detained in connection with Friday’s attack.
Most of the Iraqi wounded were rushed to a hospital in Mosul, where doctors struggled to cope because many hospital staff members were away for the weekend, which starts Friday in Iraq.
Ahmed Abdullah knelt at the bedside of his badly wounded and unconscious son Sharif, 19, who worked at a tire repair shop not far from the entrance to the base. “Where is the government?” he asked, distraught and tearful. “Where are the security forces?”
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Remains of 5 killed in Iraq arrive in Dover
AP
– A carry team at Dover Air Force Base, Del., carries the transfer case containing the remains of Staff …
* Five Soldiers From Fort Carson Killed In Iraq Play Video Iraq Video:Five Soldiers From Fort Carson Killed In Iraq CBS4 Denver
* Elk Grove Soldier Killed By Car Bomb In Iraq Play Video Iraq Video:Elk Grove Soldier Killed By Car Bomb In Iraq CBS 13 / CW 31 Sacramento
Mon Apr 13, 2:23 am ET
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. – The remains of five soldiers killed in Iraq this week in the deadliest attack against U.S. troops in more than a year arrived at Dover Air Force base Sunday as family members watched.
Five flag-draped transfer cases were unloaded from a jet on a crisp, clear evening in a somber half-hour ceremony broken only by the cries of children, the hum of the aircraft and the cameras of the media that were allowed to attend.
"You see these five caskets, flag-draped, it's sobering beyond belief," said David Pautsch, whose son, Cpl. Jason G. Pautsch, 20, of Davenport, Iowa, was among those being returned.
"There's no music in the background but just the stark reality of those caskets laying there against the backdrop of this huge 747," he said. "You're just sobered, and you have to come to grips with the finality of it all. It provides good closure. You realize that this is the end."
The soldiers were killed Friday when a suicide bomber driving a truck detonated a ton of explosives near a police headquarters in the northern city of Mosul. The U.S. military said Iraqi police were the bomber's target and that the Americans were caught up as bystanders.
Two Iraqi policemen also were killed in the midmorning blast near the Iraqi National Police headquarters. At least 62 people, including one American soldier and 27 civilians, were wounded, officials said.
Sunday's ceremony marks the fourth time the media has been allowed to cover the arrival of overseas casualties since the Pentagon adopted a new policy that requires getting family permission. It ended an 18-year ban on press coverage of the arrival ceremony.
A six-member transfer team from the Army's Old Guard in Washington and an eight-member Air Force team moved the cases off the lift in an efficient, tightly choreographed process.
The Army identified the soldiers as Pautsch; Staff Sgt. Gary L. Woods Jr., 24, of Lebanon Junction, Ky.; Staff Sgt. Bryan E. Hall, 25, of Elk Grove, Calif.; Sgt. Edward W. Forrest Jr., 25, of St. Louis; and Private Second Class Bryce E. Gautier, 22, of Cypress, Calif.
The five were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.
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Suicide bomb kills at least four at Iraq checkpoint
20 Apr 2009 09:29:36 GMT
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
(Adds background, source name)
BAGHDAD, April 20 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform killed four police officials at a checkpoint in northeastern Iraq, police said.
Lieutenant Colonel Hameed al-Shimari, who heads an emergency police unit in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, said a number of U.S. soldiers were also killed in the attack at a checkpoint near the Baquba municipality.
The U.S. military could not be immediately reached for confirmation.
Seven civilians were also wounded, the police official said.
While violence has declined sharply across most of Iraq, ethnically mixed Diyala province has remained one of most restive areas of the country.
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