March 18, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A homicide bomber struck Thursday close to a hotel in Basra, killing three Iraqi bystanders a day after another bomb went off near a hotel in Baghdad.

The latest bomb blast, along with fresh attacks that killed three American soldiers and three Iraqi journalists, comes on the eve of Saturday's one-year anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

In Basra, a city in southern Iraq that is patrolled by British military forces, a man suspected of being involved in the bombing got out of the vehicle shortly before the blast but was caught by passers-by and stabbed to death, Lt. Col. Ali Kazem of the Iraqi police said. Two others also spotted getting out of the vehicle before the explosion were caught by members of the public and later arrested.

At least 15 people were wounded, including three seriously, hospital officials said. Ambulances rushed to the area, and Iraqi police and British forces tried to push the crowd back.

The three civilians killed were two men and a boy, police said. The body of the suspected suicide bomber was still in the vehicle. No British soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Unlike other areas of Iraq, Basra has been relatively calm and mostly has been spared deadly attacks.

"It is clear that what they're trying to do is to prevent this country from moving forward," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit, deputy chief of U.S. operations in Iraq, told Fox News on Thursday. "They can't drive the U.S. military out. They realize they can't drive out the Iraqi security forces ... They're trying to drive a wedge in society through intimidation."

Officials are still trying to determine who "they" are, but Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, told Fox News that Al Qaeda or Jordanian Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were being eyed as possible culprits.

"It has all the fingerprints, all the look and feel of the foreign fighters who have been coming into this country," Senor said.

In separate attacks, insurgents fired mortar rounds at two U.S. military bases on Wednesday, killing three American soldiers and wounding nine others, the military said Thursday. The deaths brought to 567 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the start of hostilities last year, according to U.S. Department of Defense figures.

In Fallujah, insurgents clashed with U.S. troops Thursday, leaving a civilian dead, another wounded and two U.S. soldiers slightly hurt, witnesses said.

At least 10 masked attackers used AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades against the soldiers, who were guarding a building where a meeting between local officials and U.S. military authorities was under way. Military helicopters and jet fighters flew overhead as the troops fired back.

A U.S. military media official said she had no information on the clash. Fallujah is part of the so-called Sunni Triangle, an area which has been a hotbed of anti-Coalition attacks.

Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on a minibus, killing three Iraqi journalists and wounding nine other employees of a coalition-funded TV station in northeastern Iraq, police said.

The Iraqi journalists were killed in the city of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, when attackers in a car opened fire on the minibus they were riding in, said Sanaa al-Daghistani, information director of Diyala TV.

Rebels often target Iraqis perceived as collaborators with the Americans, and the attacks underlined the continued vulnerability of Iraqi civilians nearly a year after Saddam Hussein was ousted.

In Baghdad, investigators picked through the rubble of the Mount Lebanon Hotel. Officials lowered the death toll to seven, including one Briton, and put the number of injured at 45.

U.S. Army Col. Jill Morgenthaler confirmed the attack was a homicide bombing but said the destroyed Mount Lebanon Hotel may not have been the intended target, because the vehicle loaded with explosives was in the middle of the street and not parked in front of the hotel.

She said it was not clear what the target may have been. The hotel is in the middle of a busy district that is both commercial and residential.

The attacks took place behind Firdos Square, where Iraqis toppled a bronze statue of Saddam on April 9 with the help of U.S. Marines who had just entered the center of the capital.

U.S. officials said the attacks would not change U.S. policy.

"Democracy is taking root in Iraq and there is no turning back," said Scott McClellan, White House spokesman. "This is a time of testing, but the terrorists will not prevail."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114523,00.html