Homemade Bomb Kills 3 GIs In Iraq
Three American soldiers died when a roadside bomb ripped through their convoy near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Saturday, while a car bomb targeting a police station in Iraq's third largest city killed nine people and injured 45 others Saturday.
The car bombing followed warnings by U.S. military commanders this week that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida — which has fequently used vehicle borne bombs for its terror attacks in other parts of the world — is trying to gain a foothold in Iraq.
Witnesses in Mosul, Iraq's major northern city, said what appeared to be a suicide attacker drove through a security barricade in front of the police station before blowing up his vehicle outside the building. Officials confirmed a car bomb but wouldn't say if it was a suicide attack.
CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey in Baghdad, says, "The attack was part of an escalating campaign against anyone who works with the Coalition Authority.
In Kirkuk, a homemade bomb exploded as a 4th Infantry Division convoy passed by about 25 miles southwest of the city Saturday, killing the three soldiers, the U.S. military said. The deaths raised to 522 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq conflict.
"The attacks fly in the face of claims by military authorities that they are getting on top of the insurgency," Pizzey says. "They also serve as a warning to the U.N. mission heading to Iraq to assess how power can be transferred by June. The UN will be expected to make an honest assessment in a place where foot patrols must check for car bombs AT the headquarters of the Coalition Authority -- the people on whom they must rely most."
In other developments:
Saturday was a pay day and the two-story police station in Mosul was crowded with staff at the time of the midmorning bomb attack, said police Lt. Mohammed Fadil.
Severed limbs, some of them smoldering, and decapitated bodies were seen in the bloodied street in front of the police station. Windows of buildings were shattered and pieces of burning car wreckage spewing acrid black smoke littered the streets. At least five cars were destroyed.
Stunned survivors stumbled down the street, their clothing soaked in blood. A huge crater was gouged out by the blast.
Staff at the Republican Hospital in Mosul said nine people including civilians and policemen were killed and 45 others were wounded.
American soldiers in full combat gear hurried to the scene and cordoned the area. No American troops were near at the time of the blast.
Saturday's attacks occurred a day before the start of the four-day Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. The feast, a major Muslim holiday, commemorates the Quran's account of God allowing the patriarch Abraham to sacrifice a sheep instead of his son Ismail. The Old Testament account says another son, Isaac, was spared.
The police station is next to the University of Mosul campus. Mosul is 225 miles north of the capital, Baghdad.
Police stations have been the frequent targets of insurgents fighting U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last April. Many of the attacks have been carried out through car bombings and roadside bombs that have killed scores of civilians.
In the deadliest insurgent attack since the capture of Saddam on Dec. 13, a suicide car bombing at the gates of the U.S.-led coalition headquarters in Baghdad left at least 31 people dead and more than 120 injured.
On Friday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations for the coalition, told reporters that car bombings and suicide bombings are tactics "you don't typically associate" with homegrown Iraqi insurgents. At the same time, some al-Qaida literature turning up in raids and the suicide attacks "would indicate there is a presence" of al-Qaida in Iraq, he said.
Earlier, the commander of coalition forces, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, warned that the recent arrrest of an al-Qaida operative, Hassan Ghul, as well as the car bombings show the network is trying to "gain a foothold" in Iraq.
Also Saturday, a bomb exploded under the car of police Col. Adnan Radeef al-Ani, who heads a quick response team, in front of his house in Baghdad, slightly injuring five children in the street. Al-Ani told The Associated Press the bomb was apparently triggered by a timer.