World

Ten GIs Killed In Iraq

April 29, 2004 / 10:39 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Eight U.S. soldiers from the Army's 1st Armored Division were killed and four wounded Thursday when a car bomb detonated south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

Those deaths came after another U.S. soldier from the Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division was killed Thursday by a rocket-propelled grenade attack on his patrol in eastern Baghdad, the military said.

Another U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded Thursday when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy outside the city of Baqouba, 24 miles north of the capital, the military said.

The deaths raise to 126 the number of U.S. service members killed in combat in April, the bloodiest month for U.S. forces in Iraq.

The military announced that another soldier died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad. At least 736 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. Up to 1,200 Iraqis also have been killed this month.

Meanwhile, a Marine commander said all U.S. forces will end the siege of Fallujah, pulling back to allow a newly created, all-Iraqi security force to move into the city starting Friday under a new agreement.

The deal was reached after talks involving several parties, including U.S. officials and local leaders, reports CBS News' Lisa Barron.

In other developments:

Gunmen killed a foreign civilian in Basra and seriously wounded his driver, an Iraqi police official said. Three members of an Iraqi family were killed when a rocket hit a residential building in the northern city of Beiji. Two shells exploded outside a base in southern Iraq where hundreds of Japanese soldiers are stationed.

CBS News' 60 Minutes II has obtained photographs that are part of the evidence in the case against six American soldiers facing court martial for mistreating Iraqi prisoners.

U.S. commanders may not ask for more troops, but if they do, the Army would have to resort to extreme measures to answer the call. Of the service's 10 active-duty divisions, all or parts of nine are either already in Iraq to serve 12-month tours of duty, or have just returned home in recent weeks after a year's duty.

Britain is under pressure to send more troops to Iraq, but a senior government official tells the Guardian newspaper that military commanders "strongly oppose" any increase.

Iraq's woefully under-equipped hospitals are trying to get more ambulances, blood and emergency supplies, fearing that Iraq will see more suicide attacks.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan hit back at allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program, saying the world body had no control over Saddam Hussein's oil smuggling and was being blamed unfairly.

A Defense Department official, John Shaw, is being investigated for allegedly trying to shape a postwar contract to favor a mobile phone consortium where friends worked, the Los Angeles Times reports.

A CBS News/New York Times poll finds just 32 percent of Americans, the lowest number ever, say Iraq was a threat that required immediate military action. Less than half, 47 percent, now say the U.S. did the right thing taking military action in Iraq.

A Pentagon intelligence report concludes the insurgency in Iraq is largely orchestrated by former Saddam intelligence officers, the New York Times reports, who may have laid plans for the guerrilla war even before Baghdad fell last April.

Many of the guerrillas in Fallujah are thought to be former members of Saddam's regime or military.

The new force to patrol the city under the agreement, known as the Fallujah Protective Army, will be made up of up to 1,100 Iraqi soldiers led by a former general from the military of Saddam Hussein, Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said Thursday.

He identified the commander of the FPA only as Gen. Salah, a former division commander under Saddam. The force will be made up of former Iraqi soldier and police and be subordinate to the Marine 1st Expeditionary Force.

Violence in Fallujah, some of it aired live on television screens with images of explosions and burning buildings, increased pressure on the United States to prevent a revival of the heavy bloodshed in Fallujah during the first two weeks of April.

"Violent military action by an occupying power against inhabitants of an occupied country will only make matters worse," Annan warned. "It's definitely time, time now for those who prefer restraint and dialogue to make their voices heard."

On Wednesday, U.S. warplanes dropped 500-pound, laser-guided bombs on guerrilla targets as battles broke out in several parts of the city, including areas that had been relatively quiet. Witnesses reported at least 25 destroyed buildings. It was the third straight day of clashes there.

U.S. troops at the main checkpoint in and out of Fallujah opened fire on a car, killing several Iraqis but there were differing accounts of the circumstances of the attacks.

The car bomb attack that killed the eight soldiers occurred near the town of Mahmoudiyah, the military said. An Army quick reaction force sealed off the area and medical evacuation teams transported the wounded to the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad.

The 1st Armored soldiers killed were to have returned to their home base in Germany by now, under their original deployment orders. The division's departure was blocked by the Pentagon and the unit was ordered to remain in Iraq for 90 days, after this month's surge in violence. Soldiers who had already returned to Germany were ordered back to Iraq.

In the south, a U.S. base in the Shiite holy city of Najaf came under mortar fire Thursday in an attack that caused no casualties but showed increasing boldness from Shiite militiamen in the city. Militiamen also attacked a U.S. convoy passing through part of the city overnight, prompting an exchange that killed an Iraqi woman and wounded six people, hospital officials said.

A volley of seven mortar rounds Thursday hit in and around the U.S. base in the holy city of Najaf, where anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is based. The attack caused no damage or casualties, but it showed increasing boldness by militiamen.