Steve Quayle News Alerts

October 28, 2003
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq - A car bomb exploded Tuesday near a police station on a major street in the tense city of Fallujah, killing at least four people, police said. The attack came a day after a series of suicide bombings in Baghdad left about three dozen dead.

In northern Iraq , four American soldiers were wounded in ambushes on patrols near the usually peaceful city of Mosul.

Meanwhile, unknown gunmen assassinated a deputy mayor of Baghdad in an apparent hit-run shooting, the U.S. occupation authority reported Tuesday.

Faris Abdul Razzaq al-Assam, deputy mayor for technical services, had returned from last week's international Iraq donors' conference in Madrid, Spain, when he was shot Sunday, the Coalition Provisional Authority said.

Tom Basile, a CPA spokesman, said he had no details on the killing, other than that it occurred in Baghdad, and "we believe he was shot in a hit-and-run incident."

Monday was the bloodiest day in the Iraqi capital since Saddam Hussein)'s regime was ousted more than six months ago. Suicide bombers struck the Red Cross headquarters and three police stations, killing eight Iraqi policemen, at least 26 Iraqi civilians and a U.S. soldier. Aid organizations were weighing their role in the insurgency-plagued nation.

The attacks appeared to be directed at Iraqis who work with the U.S. occupation, but U.S. officials were unsure who was responsible — with some blaming Saddam loyalists, others pointed to foreign fighters.

Investigators are trying to determine whether a would-be fifth suicide bomber — who was caught Monday before he could detonate his explosives — is truly Syrian as he claims, an official of the U.S. occupation authority said.

The man had a Syrian passport and investigators are trying to determine if it's authentic, said the official on condition of anonymity.

Tuesday's bomb in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was in a Toyota that exploded in front of a power station and about 30 yards from a school and 100 yards from a police station, witness Hamid Ali said. The target was unclear.

Tawfiq Mijbel, who was badly injured by shrapnel, said he had been driving directly behind the vehicle that exploded. "It stopped in front of the power company. A man got out, while another stayed in the car. A few seconds later it blew up," Mijbel said from his hospital bed.

Khamis Mijbal, who owns a shop opposite the spot where the car blew up said the blast produced a massive ball of fire and that debris flew in all directions.

The school was closed, but police said one body was found inside. Police Col. Jalal Sabri said all the victims appeared to have been bystanders. Sabri said at least four people were dead but the number could reach six. The count was difficult because some victims were dismembered, he said.

To the north near Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, two U.S. patrols were ambushed Monday night.

One soldier was wounded when insurgents attacked his convoy in southeastern Mosul and three others were wounded, one seriously, when their patrol was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the town of Tal Afar, just west of Mosul, the U.S. command said.

The brazen and deadly attacks in Baghdad, including a rocket barrage Sunday on a hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying, attested to the surge in resistance by opponents of the American occupation.

Secretary of State Colin Powell urged the Red Cross and other nongovernment organizations — as well as foreign contractors and the United Nations — to stay in Iraq.

"They are needed. Their work is needed. And if they are driven out, then the terrorists win," Powell said Monday in Washington.

Antonella Notari, chief spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, said no decision had been taken whether to evacuate non-Iraqi staff. Twelve of the dead in Monday's attacks were killed in the car-bombing outside the ICRC office in Baghdad.

However, the German TV network ARD quoted the head of the ICRC delegation in Iraq as saying the evacuation of Red Cross personnel would begin Tuesday.

The three-story Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad was empty Tuesday, with staffers being ordered to remain at home.

The attacks Monday occurred at the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said they believed Saddam Hussein loyalists were responsible. President Bush said insurgents had become more "desperate" because of what he said was progress in Iraq.

However, some coalition and Iraqi officials blamed foreign fighters.

A coalition spokesman, Charles Heatly, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that "there certainly are indications that there are foreign terrorists who are coming into Iraq," but he did not explicitly accuse them of responsibility.

Britain's special representative in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, also said Tuesday that foreign terrorists could be coming into Iraq from Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The use of suicide bombings in Monday's attacks "is a sign of foreign terrorist tactics, rather than the Saddam loyalist elements that we are still trying to chase down," Greenstock told BBC.

Asked whether Syria and Iran were contributing to the problems, he said that while the two countries had cooperated in many respects, they "also have elements in their authorities who want to meddle."

Since Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1, 113 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, and about 1,675 have been wounded. U.S. forces come under attack an average of 26 times a day, and incidents have been on the rise since early September.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=1&u=/ap/20031028/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq