Five GIs Killed In Iraq
Five U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb and the bodies of foreigners were dragged through the streets on Wednesday in the turbulent Sunni triangle west of Baghdad.
The five soldiers' deaths brought to at least 591 the number of Americans killed in Iraq. The explosive device that killed the five American troops blew up when their vehicle ran over it, U.S. Army Col. Jill Morgenthaler said in Baghdad.
The attack happened in Anbar province, which encompasses Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns where anti-U.S. insurgents are active.
In the same area, jubilant crowds dragged the burned, mutilated bodies of several foreigners, including a woman and one American man, through the streets of Fallujah after the victims were ambushed by gunmen.
Footage from Associated Press Television News showed one man beating a corpse with a metal pole. Others tied a cord to one of the bodies, attached it to a car and drove it down a street, surrounded by a cheering crowd. An Associated Press reporter saw two blackened bodies hanging from a bridge.
"The people of Fallujah hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed said. Some of the corpses were dismembered, he said.
The scenes of townspeople stoning the charred corpses of the unidentified foreigners and hanging at least two bodies from a bridge highlighted the hatred in this part of Iraq for the U.S.-led coalition.
In other developments:
In the attack that killed the foreign nationals, gunmen in Fallujah attacked two four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles, killing their occupants and setting the cars on fire. Some witnesses said four people were in the vehicles, others said six.
APTN footage showed the charred bodies of three slain men. Some were wearing flak jackets, said resident Safa Mohammedi.
What looked like military identification tags and an American passport were found in the wreckage, CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier reported. But the victims were wearing civilian clothes and bulletproof vests commonly used by foreign contractors, the media and the military.
Witnesses said the two vehicles were attacked with small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades.
Hours after the attack, the city was quiet. There were no U.S. troops or Iraqi police in the area.
Fallujah is in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where support for Saddam was strong and rebels often carry out attacks against American forces.
The California-based 1st Marine Expeditionary Force assumed responsibility for Fallujah and surrounding areas from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in a troop rotation on March 24. In previous months, U.S. soldiers rarely entered the center of Fallujah, but Marines conducted patrols in the city in their first week and fought a battle with insurgents on Friday that lasted several hours.
In nearby Ramadi, insurgents threw a grenade at a government building and Iraqi security forces returned fire Wednesday, witnesses said. It was not clear if there were casualties.
Also in Ramadi, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy, witnesses said. U.S. officials in Baghdad could not confirm the attack.
On Tuesday in Ramadi, one U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
Northeast of Baghdad, in the city of Baqouba on Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew up explosives in his car when he was near a convoy of government vehicles, wounding 14 Iraqis and killing himself, officials said.
The attacked convoy is normally used to transport the Diala provincial governor, Abdullah al-Joubori, but he was elsewhere at the time, said police Col. Ali Hossein.
On Tuesday, a suicide bombing outside the house of a police chief in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, killed the attacker and wounded seven others.
In Baghdad late Tuesday, a bomb exploded in a cinema that had closed for the night. Two bystanders on the street were wounded by flying glass, theater owner Ghani Mohammed said.
The latest violence came two days after Carina Perelli, the head of a U.N. electoral team, said better security is vital if Iraq wants to hold elections by a Jan. 31 deadline. The polls are scheduled to follow a June 30 transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government.
U.S. commanders had predicted an upsurge in violence as the June 30 deadline approaches.
There is no plan yet for what government will take over from the United States.