Dec. 22, 2004
Injured GIs Arrive In Germany
35 Troops, Seven Civilians Flown To Military Medical Center In Germany
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Play CBS Video Video Details Of Blast At U.S. Base The devastating attack at the Mosul base mess tent killed at least 22, including 14 U.S. troops. Dozens were wounded. CBS News' Kimberly Dozier reports.
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Video Families Anxiously Await Many of the troops stationed at the base in Mosul were from Virginia and Washington state. Their families tell The Early Show's Thalia Assuras of their agonizing wait for news.
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Video Lt. Gen. Talks Mosul Attack Lt. General Thomas Metz gives The Early Show a detailed explanation of what happened in the attack on the U.S. base in Mosul. He explains previous attacks on this site and its vulnerability.
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An unidentified casualty is stretchered into an ambulance at the U.S. Airbase of Ramstein, southern Germany, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004. (AP)
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Sgt. Dee Robinson of Gardiner, Maine, right, looks toward the triage area as others load a wounded comrade into a Humvee outside the mess tent where 22 people were killed Tuesday. (AP/Portland Press Herald, G. Rec)
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Soldiers look over the damaged mess tent where 22 people were killed. (AP/PORTLAND PRESS HERALD)
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Photo Essay Attack In Mosul Mortar attack at base leaves dozens dead and wounded.
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Interactive American Heroes Profiles of U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq, a look at the war's toll and pictures of mourning.
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Interactive Attacks Map Details on the insurgency and terrorism that has continued to take lives since the fall of Saddam.
With the Christmas holidays near, extra staff were told to be on standby to help care for the 35 U.S. troops and seven civilians, who were brought to arrived in Germany from Balad, north of Baghdad.
Eight patients were in intensive care, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw said. She had no details on their condition, but said the injured generally have "chest wounds and shrapnel wounds and broken bones."
Tuesday's attack on a base in Mosul killed 22 people and injured 69, the U.S. military command in Baghdad said. Of the wounded, 44 were U.S. military personnel and the rest American civilians, Iraqi troops and other foreigners.
In Mosul, U.S. troops backed by armored vehicles swept through the virtually empty streets amid an undeclared curfew in Iraq's third largest city Wednesday, a day after one of the deadliest attacks on American troops.
In other recent developments:
In light snowfall, many of the wounded were carried down the C-141 transport plane's rear ramp on stretchers before being put on buses for the 2½-mile trip from the U.S. Air Force's base at Ramstein to Landstuhl.
"They're not perhaps critical, but they need to be on a litter," Ramstein spokesman Maj. Mike Young said.
Additional medical staff were put on standby to be ready to work within two hours, Shaw said.
"We have to see what we need," she said.
The military was investigating whether a bomb was planted at the mess tent in Forward Operating Base Marez, where the blast sprayed shrapnel as U.S. soldiers sat down to lunch Tuesday. Initial reports said a 122 mm rocket ripped through the tent's ceiling.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, told CNN that a planted bomb was "a possibility." A radical Sunni group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, said it carried out the attack and claimed it was a "martyrdom operation" — a reference to a suicide bomber.
The bomb was apparently packed with pellets the size of BBs that ripped across the tent when it exploded, Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia — the main U.S. force in northern Iraq — told newspaper columnist Bill Nemitz.
The military was also looking at better ways of protecting places where U.S. troops regularly gather on their bases, such as dining areas and gyms — areas that are frequently targeted by mortars, though usually with little accuracy. Nemitz, embedded with the troops at Marez for the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, told CNN that he heard "a lot of discussion" among troops about the vulnerability of the tent.
An Associated Press reporter saw almost no cars or people on the streets of Mosul Wednesday and most schools in the city were closed, although a formal curfew was not declared. Even traffic policemen were not at major intersections as usual.
U.S. forces blocked Mosul's five bridges over the Tigris River that link the western and eastern sectors of the city, while hundreds of troops spread out across several neighborhoods, conducting sweeps in eastern districts backed by Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees.
The blast came as the military had nearly finished building a reinforced, bunker-like dining area at the camp to increase protection against mortar and rocket attacks, Metz said. The new facility was due to be completed in February, he said.
"We recognized the threat," Metz said Wednesday on CBS News' The Early Show
Metz told CNN that previous rocket and mortar attacks on Marez were "rather random."
The dead included 18 Americans — 13 service members and five U.S. civilian contractors — and three Iraqi National Guard members as well as one unidentified non-U.S. citizen, the U.S. military command in Baghdad said Wednesday.
Of the 69 wounded, 44 were U.S. military personnel and the remainder American civilians, Iraqi troops, and other foreigners.
Defense contractor Halliburton Co. said four of its employees were killed.
There was little apparent sympathy for the dead Americans on Mosul streets Wednesday.
"In fact, what has happened in Mosul yesterday is something expected," said Sattar Jabbar. "When occupiers come to any country (they) find resistance. And this is within Iraqi resistance."
"I prefer that American troops leave the country and go out of cities so that Iraq will be safer and we run its affairs," Jamal Mahmoud, a trade union official. "I wish that 2,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, not 20."
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which claimed the responsibility for Sunday's blast, is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. The Sunni group claimed responsibility for the execution of 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul.
Relatives of troops waited anxiously for word of their loved ones. A news photo of Sgt. Evan Byler, his blood-stained hand clutching a cigarette, was a special Christmas gift for his fiancée Michele Gibson of Virginia.
"I was pretty much hysterical all afternoon until I at least saw the picture and saw that he was okay," she tells CBS News Correspondent Thalia Assuras. "I feel very bad for the families that lost whoever they lost, but I feel thankful that he's okay."
©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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