World

Suicide Car Bomber Kills 14 Iraqi Soldiers

June 9, 2007 / 1:09 PM EDT / CBS/AP

A suspected al Qaeda suicide bomber rammed a speeding gasoline truck into an Iraqi army checkpoint outside the capital on Saturday, killing at least 14 soldiers as militants hammered the country's shaky security forces.

The terror campaign against Iraqi troops and police appears designed to blunt U.S. progress in creating a stable local force so the Americans can go home. U.S. military officers began noticing the new pattern of attacks last month.

The focus on Iraqi forces was detailed to Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of the 1st Cavalry Division which runs the nearly four-month-old security operation in Baghdad, during a recent visit to the capital's Karradah district.

Lt. Col. Troy D. Perry, the battalion commander in the area, told Fil there was an increasing pattern of bombers allowing U.S. patrols to pass hidden roadside bombs that were then detonated a short time later as Iraqi forces drove by.

Fil and Perry speculated al Qaeda was focusing on Iraqi forces to unnerve the soldiers and police who are working with U.S. forces to clamp off violence in the capital.

"Al Qaeda is the biggest problem you've got right now," Fil said in a brief meeting with Iraqi army 1st Lt. Ziad Tariq, at an Iraqi base adjacent to the U.S. joint security station in Karradah late last month.

The suicide tank truck driver killed the 14 Iraqi soldiers near the gate of the army unit's headquarters near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital, provincial police spokesman Capt. Muthanna Khalid said. Twenty-nine others were wounded.

Iraqi soldiers opened fire on the speeding truck but were not able to stop it until it reached the unit headquarters and the driver detonated his explosives.

Amir al-Saadi, a 40-year-old vendor who works nearby, said the explosion flattened the army unit's headquarters building.

"The explosion was huge and caused the building to collapse," he said. "Police, soldiers and residents are searching for bodies and people who are still alive but buried under the rubble."

At least 767 Iraqi security personnel have been killed since a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown began on Feb. 14. During the same length of time preceding the operation, at least 593 Iraqi security personnel were killed, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press. The actual number in both cases is likely higher as many killings go unreported.

A total of 73 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Saturday, 24 of them bodies dumped in Baghdad. Most of those victims were killed with a shot to the back of the head and showed signs of torture.

In Other Developments:

In Baghdad, a parked car bomb struck a convoy of Iraqi police commandos, killing one of them and a pedestrian and wounding seven other people, and gunmen elsewhere killed one policeman and wounded another while they were on a foot patrol.

A roadside bomb that apparently targeted a police patrol in eastern Baghdad instead struck a minibus, killing at least five people. In Baqouba, the provincial capital of Diyala, two suicide bombers on foot blew themselves up at a police checkpoint, killing one policeman.

An American soldier was killed Saturday by small-arms fire in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, the military said. The death raised to at least 3,502 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

An apparent rocket attack Saturday at a U.S.-run detention facility in southern Iraq killed at least six detainees and wounded 50, the military said. No American casualties were reported. The attack was launched against the internment facility at Camp Bucca, the military said in a brief statement. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said the center appeared to have been hit by rockets.

In Baghdad, sporadic clashes erupted for nearly two hours in Amil, a dangerous neighborhood that has divided into a predominantly Sunni western half and an eastern side controlled by Shiite militiamen.

Diplomatic tensions rose, with the Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoning the Turkish charge d'affaires and calling for an immediate halt of cross-border shelling into northern Iraq, saying such actions "undermine confidence between the two nations and negatively affect their friendship." The statement was the first government confirmation of the shelling. Turkey has been building up its forces along the border with Iraq and scattered shelling has been reported while its leaders debate whether to stage a major incursion to pursue separatist Kurdish rebels who cross over from bases in Iraq to attack Turkish targets — an operation that could ignite a wider conflict involving Iraqi Kurds and draw in the United States.