February 11, 2009 4:44 PM
- Text
3 GIs Killed In Baghdad Bridge Blast
(CBS/AP)
With a thunderous rumble and cloud of dust and smoke, a suicide car bomb brought down a section of highway bridge south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding six from a checkpoint guarding the crossing and blocking traffic on Iraq's main north-south artery.
The U.S. military said engineers were dispatched with bulldozers and other heavy equipment to clear the highway, which was partially blocked by debris from the overpass. An Iraqi interpreter also was wounded in the attack, according to the statement that gave the casualty toll.
Donald Campbell, a 40-year-old Scot with the private security firm Armor Group International, and his colleagues were in a passing convoy and worked with a U.S. Army quick reaction force for some 45 minutes to pull trapped men from the rubble, scrambling over the fallen concrete.
U.S. armored vehicles provided cover fire from their cannons after the bombing, which occurred in the area dubbed the "triangle of death" for its frequent Sunni insurgent attacks.
The blast dropped one of two sections of the "Checkpoint 20" bridge, which crosses over the north-south expressway, six miles east of Mahmoudiya.
It appeared that a northbound suicide driver stopped and detonated his vehicle beside a support pillar, said Lt. Col. Garry Bush, an Army munitions officer who was in the convoy, which also carried an Associated Press reporter and photographer and arrived two minutes after the blast.
A U.S. Army checkpoint and a tent structure, apparently a rest area, fell into the shattered concrete. The crossing was believed to have been closed to all but military traffic at the time.
Armor Group security guards, all ex-military, and others in the convoy rushed to the ruins. They found a scene of confusion.
"When that size blast went off, everyone was in shock," said one of the first atop the rubble, Jackie Smith, 53, a former lieutenant colonel now working as a civilian Army munitions expert.
He said he saw what he believed was the engine block of a truck — apparently what remained of the suicide vehicle.
Soon the outpost sergeant in charge was organizing a search for his missing men, Smith said. The Armor Group team climbed up with first-aid kits, stretchers and other aid.
With the Army's quick reaction force, they struggled to lift concrete shards off the men, pinned along the slope of what was once a roadway. At one point, a Bradley armored vehicle with a tow chain pulled a slab off a pinned victim to free him.
Then a shout went up, "Morphine! Morphine!" and a black T-shirt-clad Briton administered painkiller to the freed man.
"Another poor fellow looked crushed beneath a concrete slab," said the Armor Group's Campbell.
During the rescue operation, U.S. armored vehicles opened up with suppressing fire, possibly having spotted movement in the surrounding countryside, flat and baking in 100-degree-plus Fahrenheit temperatures.
In other developments:
The House of Commons on Monday rejected a motion by Britain's opposition Conservative Party calling for a formal inquiry into the decision to go to war in Iraq. By a vote of 288 to 253, the lower house of parliament sided with Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has ruled out such an inquiry while British troops are deployed in Iraq.
The U.S. military on Sunday reported the deaths of three other American troops. Among them were a U.S. airman killed in a roadside bombing in southern Iraq; and two soldiers — one killed in Baghdad and another who died of injuries in Diyala Province. The deaths raised to at least 3,509 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
A suicide truck bomber struck an Iraqi police office in Tikrit Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 50, police said. The explosion destroyed a building housing the highway police directorate in the Albu Ajil village on the eastern outskirts of ousted leader Saddam Hussein's hometown, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. Tikrit is 80 miles north of Baghdad.
Even as the United States has condemned Sudan for its role in the mass killings in Darfur, the Sudanese regime has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on insurgents in Iraq, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
The Iraqi parliament voted Monday in a closed session to remove the speaker after a series of scandals involving the controversial lawmaker, legislators said. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani will be replaced by another Sunni Arab, they said. Al-Mashhadani's behavior has repeatedly embarrassed the Sunni Arab partners in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government. Many of the house's 275 legislators viewed his behavior as unbecoming and, on occasion, erratic.
The U.S. military said engineers were dispatched with bulldozers and other heavy equipment to clear the highway, which was partially blocked by debris from the overpass. An Iraqi interpreter also was wounded in the attack, according to the statement that gave the casualty toll.
Donald Campbell, a 40-year-old Scot with the private security firm Armor Group International, and his colleagues were in a passing convoy and worked with a U.S. Army quick reaction force for some 45 minutes to pull trapped men from the rubble, scrambling over the fallen concrete.
U.S. armored vehicles provided cover fire from their cannons after the bombing, which occurred in the area dubbed the "triangle of death" for its frequent Sunni insurgent attacks.
The blast dropped one of two sections of the "Checkpoint 20" bridge, which crosses over the north-south expressway, six miles east of Mahmoudiya.
It appeared that a northbound suicide driver stopped and detonated his vehicle beside a support pillar, said Lt. Col. Garry Bush, an Army munitions officer who was in the convoy, which also carried an Associated Press reporter and photographer and arrived two minutes after the blast.
A U.S. Army checkpoint and a tent structure, apparently a rest area, fell into the shattered concrete. The crossing was believed to have been closed to all but military traffic at the time.
Armor Group security guards, all ex-military, and others in the convoy rushed to the ruins. They found a scene of confusion.
"When that size blast went off, everyone was in shock," said one of the first atop the rubble, Jackie Smith, 53, a former lieutenant colonel now working as a civilian Army munitions expert.
He said he saw what he believed was the engine block of a truck — apparently what remained of the suicide vehicle.
Soon the outpost sergeant in charge was organizing a search for his missing men, Smith said. The Armor Group team climbed up with first-aid kits, stretchers and other aid.
With the Army's quick reaction force, they struggled to lift concrete shards off the men, pinned along the slope of what was once a roadway. At one point, a Bradley armored vehicle with a tow chain pulled a slab off a pinned victim to free him.
Then a shout went up, "Morphine! Morphine!" and a black T-shirt-clad Briton administered painkiller to the freed man.
"Another poor fellow looked crushed beneath a concrete slab," said the Armor Group's Campbell.
During the rescue operation, U.S. armored vehicles opened up with suppressing fire, possibly having spotted movement in the surrounding countryside, flat and baking in 100-degree-plus Fahrenheit temperatures.
In other developments:
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