Steve Quayle News Alerts

October 27, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A series of car bomb attacks on Monday killed 34 people, excluding the homicide bombers, in Baghdad, shattering what should have been a solemn day as Iraq began observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

About 12 people were killed at the International Committee of the Red Cross building in central Baghdad and 27 others were slain in attacks on three police stations. Most of the victims were Iraqis. The U.S. military said one American soldier was killed in one of the police station attacks.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister, put the Iraqi death toll at 34, including 26 civilians and eight police but not the bombers. Iraq's police chief and deputy interior minister, Ahmad Ibrahim, told a news conference that 65 policemen and 159 civilians were also wounded.

"There are terrorists in Iraq who are willing to kill anybody in order to stop our progress," President Bush told reporters Monday after meeting with Abizaid, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq. "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react. Our job is to find them and bring them to justice."

Bush said that the Iraqi people cannot let the small number "of killers willing to kill innocent Iraqis" to determine how they live in their own country, especially when a majority of Iraqis "want to live in a peaceful and free world."

Of the homicide bombers and terrorists in Iraq, Bush added: "We will find these people and we will bring them to justice … it's in the national interest of the United States that a peaceful Iraqi emerged. We will stay the course to make sure we reach that objective."

The bloody bombing attacks came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three U.S. soldiers overnight, and a day after insurgents devastated a hotel full of U.S. occupation officials with a rocket barrage, killing a U.S. colonel and wounding 18 other people. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was in the hotel, but was unhurt.

It was two days of violence unprecedented in this city of 5 million people since the end of the U.S.-Iraq war last April, attacks aimed at the American-led occupation and those working with it.

"We feel helpless when we see this," a distraught Iraqi doctor said at the devastated Red Cross offices.

Meanwhile, in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, witnesses said U.S. troops opened fire, killing at least four Iraqi civilians, after a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. military convoy passed.

Witnesses said a homicide bomber drove an explosives-packed ambulance up to the ICRC building's security barriers around 8:30 a.m. and detonated it, blowing down the front wall, devastating the interior and blowing shrapnel and debris over a wide area.

Throughout the morning, four other vehicles exploded at police stations in the Baghdad area. Ambulances, sirens wailing, crisscrossed the city all morning.

"From what our indications are, none of those bombers got close to the target," U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling said.

Officers stopped a fifth would-be homicide bomber at another police station in central Baghdad before he detonated his Land Cruiser. "He was shouting, 'Death to the Iraqi police! You're collaborators!"' said police Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar.

Red Cross Disaster Area

The Red Cross said 12 Iraqis were killed at its office, including two of its own employees. Baghdad ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani said she believed the employees were security guards.

In Geneva, Red Cross spokesman Florian Westphal said the ICRC had disclosed in August that it had received warnings of a threat and added that it had been cutting back on its staff since a Sri Lankan staffer was killed July 22 south of Baghdad.

"Such an attack is a major blow for us," Westphal said. "It's a big shock. It is obviously impossible to move onto a normal day's business, so we really have to step back and take stock."

Near the three-story ICRC building, cigarette vendor Ghani Khadim, 50, said he saw an Iraqi ambulance pass by his stand and approach the small compound some 100 yards away. It suddenly exploded and the blast blew out windows and injured his wife and daughter in his house behind his stand.

The vehicle had stopped some 60 feet in front of the ICRC headquarters, "at a line of barrels we have had in front to protect the building," one Red Cross employee.

The blast blew down a 40-foot section of the ICRC front wall, demolished a dozen cars in the area and apparently broke a water main, flooding the streets. The inside of the building was heavily damaged, littered with shattered glass, doors blown off their hinges, toppled bookcases and collapsed ceilings. A gaping crack had opened in a back wall, some 100 yards from the blast site, where a crater some five yards across quickly filled with water.

The Red Cross staff member said someone began firing off an automatic weapon immediately after the explosion -- "100 bullets or more." He said he believed it was a gunman somehow associated with the bomber "who wanted to scare people more."

"Of course we don't understand why somebody would attack the Red Cross," Doumani said. "The Red Cross has operated in this country since 1980, and we have not been involved in politics." Asked whether the organization would remain in Iraq, she replied: "I don't even know what we're going to do."

Two buildings away, the explosion devastated the interior of the Al-Nawal private polyclinic operated by Dr. Jamal F. Massa, 53, who had been planning to open it as a full-fledged hospital next month.

Massa said he couldn't understand why the Red Cross would be attacked, since it had even reduced its foreign staff recently. "This only hurts guards and other Iraqis."

ICRC and other international aid organizations had reduced their Baghdad staffs after the car bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, in which 23 people died.

Police Station Bombings Kill 27

Police said 27 were killed in the police station bombings, most of them Iraqis; 15 of whom were killed at the ad-Doura station in southern Baghdad. One U.S. soldier was among them, said Lt. Sarmad al-Hakim, an ad-Doura officer.

A Fox News reporter confirmed that 15 Iraqis had been killed and eight Americans injured at the ad-Doura station, which had been open only a month and was jointly staffed by Iraqis and Americans. The attacker drove up to the station in a vehicle disguised as a police truck, which detonated and blew down the building's front wall.

Teams of U.S. military police have been stationed at Baghdad police stations in recent months.

Hertling said the attacks may have been timed with the start of Ramadan in order to heighten tensions during the fasting month, when Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours and religious feelings run high.

Hertling said Monday was "a great day for the Iraqi police" because security controls prevented the bombers from reaching their targets.

But Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite Muslim member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, said the United States must speed up the training of Iraqi police and soldiers and employ ruthless measures to crush the insurgency.

"There is no doubt about it that we need to change the rules of engagement with these people," al-Rabii said in a television interview. "The rules of engagement now are too lenient."

The rocket attack Sunday struck the Al Rashid Hotel, where Wolfowitz was staying at the end of a three-day Iraq visit. The deputy defense secretary said afterward that attack "will not deter us from completing our mission" in Iraq.

The concrete western face of the 18-story hotel, located more than two miles west of the ICRC building, was pockmarked with a half-dozen or more blast holes. Windows shattered in at least two-dozen rooms. The wounded included seven American civilians, four U.S. military personnel and five non-U.S. civilians working for the coalition.

Two Iraqi security guards also were hurt.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101275,00.html