U.S. Army Said to Kill 6 in Iraq; 4 Hurt
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. paratroopers killed six attackers and wounded four others in a shootout outside the hospital run by the Jordanian government near the city of Fallujah, the Army's 82nd Airborne Division said Wednesday.
A division statement said troops came under automatic weapons fire Tuesday from a vehicle stopped near the hospital. As the soldiers returned fire, the attackers fled toward a second car but were stopped by the paratroopers, the statement said.
A third vehicle approached at high speed and did not slow when the paratroopers fired warning shots, the statement said. The soldiers fired on the vehicle, killing two people.
"Hostile forces then fired from a fourth vehicle at the U.S. troops, at which time the soldiers also engaged that automobile," the statement said, adding that the four who were wounded were evacuated for medical treatment.
The statement said four other people were killed, but gave no details.
Four people were detained, the division said. There were no American casualties.
U.S. Forces Destroy Building in Iraq
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer
NASIRIYAH, Iraq - A suicide bomber blew up a truck packed with explosives at an Italian paramilitary base Wednesday, killing at least 26 people. The United States struck at the Iraqi insurgency hours later, destroying a building in Baghdad in an assault that thundered across the capital.
The Nasiriyah attack was the deadliest against an American ally since the occupation began and appeared to send a message that international organizations are not safe anywhere in Iraq. It came on the same day the chief U.S. administrator for Iraq went to the White House to put forth proposals on transferring more authority to the Iraqis.
Col. Gianfranco Scalas said 18 Italians were killed: 12 Carabinieri paramilitary police, four soldiers, a civilian working at the base and a documentary filmmaker. A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition said at least eight Iraqis also died. The bomber — whose nationality was not known — also died.
The blast wounded 79 people, 20 of them Italians, hospital sources and Italian officials said.
Italians were stunned by their nation's single worst military loss since World War II and its first in the Iraq campaign. At Rome's tomb of the unknown soldier, the green-white-and-red flag rippled at half-staff, and parliament held a minute of silence.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi pledged that Italy's mission in Iraq would not be derailed. Opposition leaders who opposed the deployment to postwar Iraq called on the government to withdraw the contingent.
Jalal Talabani, the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, called the slain Italians "martyrs of the fight for the freedom of Iraq."
There were conflicting accounts of the attack, which took place about 10:40 a.m. at a three-story building used by the Carabinieri's multinational specialist unit in Nasiriyah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Witnesses said the decoy car ran a roadblock in front of a square where the Italian barracks was located. Guards opened fire but as the vehicle sped away, the fuel tanker approached from the opposite direction and rammed into the gate of the building before exploding.
Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino said the truck, followed by an armored car, approached the compound at high speed. Gunmen inside one of the vehicles opened fire at Italian troops guarding the entrance, he said. The guards returned fire, but the vehicle plowed through the gate, and then exploded, he added.
It was the 13th vehicle bombing in Iraq since Aug. 7, when a car exploded at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, killing at least 19 people. Wednesday's blast from the estimated 650 pounds of explosives collapsed all three stories of the building, gouged a 6-foot-deep crater in front of it, and set fire to parked cars. Secondary explosions from stored ammunition shook the area.
The scorched, twisted remains of military jeeps littered the parking lot, and bulldozers cleared rubble. Chunks of concrete and wiring hung from partly destroyed walls.
"This is terrorism, pure and simple," Scalas said.
After nightfall in Baghdad, forces from the 1st Armored Division attacked a facility used by insurgents, setting off explosions that reverberated through the capital.
"The facility is a known meeting, planning, storage and rendezvous point for belligerent elements currently conducting attacks on coalition forces and infrastructure," the Pentagon said.
A Pentagon official said the operation appeared to have been planned in advance, comparing it to recent U.S. strikes against suspected insurgent targets in Tikrit last weekend.
President Bush met with his top foreign advisers and chief Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer on Wednesday to discuss the deteriorating security situation and the impasse in drafting an Iraqi constitution.
"We have said from the outset that we wanted to transfer authority to the Iraqis as quickly as they were able to assume it and that is what we have done," Bremer said in Washington. "We have been moving forward on ways to continue to transfer authority to the Iraqis as they are ready for it."
A CIA report warned that Iraqis were losing faith in the U.S.-led forces, which is increasing support for the insurgents.
Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said there will be "ups and downs in attitudes and feelings. We will remain long enough to make sure the Iraqi people have the opportunity to put in place a government that is democratic."
Bremer's talks came as Iraqi insurgents have stepped up their attacks and U.S. and Iraqi leaders appeared to be making no progress in drafting a new constitution for Iraq.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the Bush administration expressed its condolences to Italy for "standing with the United States and the rest of the coalition in the war against terrorism."
Italy has sent about 2,300 troops to help rebuild Iraq. About 340 Carabinieri are based in Nasiriyah, along with 110 Romanians. No Romanians were reported wounded in Wednesday's attack.
Carabinieri are paramilitary police under the Defense Ministry, and have serve in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and the Balkans.
In other developments:
_U.S. troops in Baghdad on Wednesday accidentally fired on a car carrying Mohammed Bahr al-Uloun, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, wounding his driver.
_U.S. troops opened fire on a truck Tuesday night carrying live chickens to the restive city of Fallujah, killing five civilians, relatives said. The U.S. military said it had no information on the shootings.
_An American soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a patrol by the town of Taji northwest of Baghdad, and another died of wounds suffered in a roadside bombing in Baghdad.
The deaths bring to 153 the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostile fire since Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.
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Associated Press writers Alessandra Rizzo in Rome and Sabah Jerges in Nasiriyah contributed to this report.