World

At Least 40 Killed At U.S.-Iraqi Base

March 28, 2006 / 9:14 AM EST / CBS/AP

A suicide bomber attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base in northern Iraq in Monday, killing at least 40 people and wounding as many as 30, the Iraqi defense ministry said.

Also Monday, gunmen kidnapped 16 employees of an Iraqi trading company, an Interior Ministry official said Monday. The men arrived at the headquarters of the Saeed import and export company in four civilian cars and appeared to rifle through papers and computers before driving away with the employees.

No American troops were hurt in the bombing about 18 miles east of the ancient city of Tal Afar, said the U.S. military, which confirmed the attack but reported 30 deaths rather than 40.

The bomber struck shortly after noon at the station, killing both civilians and military personnel gathered among "a crowd of recruits who were attempting to join the Iraqi Army," the defense ministry said in a statement. Iraqi police and army recruits are constantly targeted, CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports.

President Bush singled out Tal Afar in a recent speech as a success story for American and Iraqi forces in the drive to quell the insurgency.

U.S. soldiers helped secure the area after the attack and treat the wounded, the U.S. military said.

Iraqi army Lt. Akram Eid told The Associated Press that many of the injured were taken to the Sykes U.S. Army base on the outskirts of Tal Afar, which is about 40 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city.

In other recent developments:

At least 21 more corpses were found Monday, many with nooses around their neck. Nine were found in west Baghdad, handcuffed, blindfolded and with ropes around their necks, police Lt. Akeel Fadhil said. Militias are blamed for many of these killings, Logan reports.

Mortar and bomb attacks killed at least four Monday. In the capital, a bomb exploded in a bus headed for the Sadr City slum of east Baghdad, killing two passengers and wounding at least four others, police Col. Hassan Jaloob said. The bomb had been left in a bag, he said. A car bomb at the entrance to Sadr City also exploded, though reports on casualties were not immediately available.

Saddam Hussein's chief deputy, who has eluded capture since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq three years ago, purportedly called for Arab leaders to back Iraq's Sunni-backed insurgency, in an audiotape broadcast Monday. The tape, which Al-Jazeera television said was made by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, appeared to be an address to the Arab League summit in Khartoum, Sudan, this week. The voice on the tape said Iraq's Sunni-led insurgency was "the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people." It was impossible to determine the tape's authenticity.

A total of at least 69 people were reported killed Sunday in one of the bloodiest days in weeks. Most of the dead appeared to be victims the shadowy Sunni-Sectarian score-settling that has torn at the fabric of Iraq since Feb. 22 when a Shiite shrine was blown apart in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Iraqi authorities reported late Sunday that U.S. forces raided an Interior Ministry building and arrested 40 policemen after discovering 17 non-Iraqi prisoners in the facility. Police 1st Lt. Thayer Mahmoud said the arrested police were being held for investigation, but the reason was not known.

The Bush administration will ask Russia about a Pentagon report that Moscow turned over information on American troop movements and other military plans to Saddam Hussein during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. "Any implication that there were those from a foreign government who may have been passing information to the Iraqis prior to the invasion would be, of course, very worrying," Rice said. Moscow denied the report's findings.

Meanwhile, a murky picture continues to emerge about violence before sundown Sunday in Iraq, with Iraqis claiming U.S. forces entered a mosque and opened fire, killing at least 20 people on the outskirts of the Shiite slum of Sadr City, reports CBS News.

Police found 30 more victims of the sectarian violence ravaging Iraq — most of them beheaded — dumped on a village road north of Baghdad on Sunday.

Accounts of the Baghdad raid varied. Aides to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said 18 men were killed in the joint U.S.-Iraqi raid on a mosque. Police said 22 people were killed in the incident at the al-Mustafa mosque. The Americans said Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. troops killed 16 "insurgents" in a raid on a community meeting hall after gunmen opened fire on approaching troops.

The firestorm of recrimination over Sunday's raid in northeast Baghdad will likely make it harder for Shiite politicians to keep a lid on their more angry followers as sectarian violence boils over, with at least 151 dead over the two-day period. A unity government involving Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds is a benchmark for American hopes of starting to withdraw troops this summer. Logan reports talks regarding a national unity government were suspended for at least a day.

Associated Press reporters who visited the scene Monday morning said the site of the attack was clearly a neighborhood Shiite mosque complex, although the American military insisted, "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation." The military said a non-Western hostage was freed, but no name or nationality was provided.

"As elements of the 1st Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade entered their objective, they came under fire. In the ensuing exchange of fire...(Iraqi troops) killed 16 insurgents. As they secured their objective, they detained 15 more individuals," the military statement said.

Also Monday, Baghdad Gov. Hussein Tahan told reporters the local government had cut ties to the U.S. military and diplomatic mission.

"The Baghdad provincial council has decided to stop dealings in regards to services and politics with the coalition forces and the U.S. Embassy because of the cowardly attack on the al-Moustafa mosque," he said without elaboration.

"Harsher measures will be taken in the future to preserve the dignity of the Iraqi citizens," Tahan said.

Jawad al-Maliki, a lawmaker from the United Iraqi Alliance, told a news conference that the Shiite bloc had cancelled Monday's session of negotiations to form a new government.

"We suspended today's meetings to discuss the formation of the government because of what happened at the al-Moustafa mosque." He said the alliance was expected to decide on Tuesday when to resume the talks.

Logan reports it remains unclear what happened, but the raid comes on the back of several incidents where Americans are being investigated for use of force on Iraqis, and there is talk on the street of revenge (video).

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, expressed concern and telephoned Iraqi military leaders and U.S. commander Gen. George Casey to "discuss the situation," said spokesman Abdul Rezzaq Al-Kadhimi.

He said the prime minister promised government compensation for families of those killed in the raid and called for Iraqis to be patient until an investigation was completed.