4 U.S. Troops Hurt in Iraq Blast, Ambush

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three U.S. soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy west of Baghdad, and insurgents shot and wounded another soldier in an ambush northwest of the capital, the military said Monday.

In London, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said British forces would likely remain in the country for years to come. He said he could not give an "exact timescale" for their withdrawal but added "it is not going to be months. ... I can't say whether it is going to be 2006, 2007."

In northern Iraq, a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi man Monday and wounded three others outside the city of Kirkuk, said Iraqi police Lt. Abdel Salam Zangana. Such bombs are a favored weapon of Iraqi guerrillas, and Zangana said he believed the bomb was intended for U.S. soldiers but detonated early.

The violence underscored remarks by British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) that the U.S.-led coalition must "get on top of the security situation" in Iraq as the country prepares for self-rule. Blair was in the southern city of Basra on Sunday for an unannounced visit to the 10,000 British troops serving in Iraq, the vast majority stationed in and around Basra in southern Iraq.

Blair's top envoy in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned Sunday that insurgents likely will stage bigger and more sophisticated attacks.

Blair, also speaking Sunday, said: "The important thing is to realize we are about to enter into a very critical six months. We have got to get on top of the security situation properly and we have got to manage the transition. Both of those things are going to be difficult."

On New Year's Eve, a car bomb killed eight people celebrating in an upscale restaurant in Baghdad. On Dec. 27, coordinated strikes including four car bombs struck the southern city of Karbala, killing 19 people, including seven coalition troops, and wounding about 170.

Greenstock said he thought 75-80 percent of attacks were being carried out by loyalists of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the rest by foreign terrorist groups that were putting in place "cell structure."

Overnight, two mortar shells exploded in the vicinity of the coalition headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriyah, causing no damage or injuries, the U.S. military said.

The four American soldiers were wounded Sunday when insurgents ambushed a foot patrol in Tikrit, injuring one, and a bomb exploded as a U.S. convoy passed in Beiji, wounding three others, the military said.

All four wounded were evacuated to combat support hospitals for treatment, the military said.

Gunmen wounded Mohammed al-Jawadi, a lawyer appointed by the U.S.-led coalition, and his son in the northern city of Mosul on Monday morning, witnesses said. Sources at the local hospital said al-Jawadi, the general prosecutor of a newly established court to fight corruption, was in critical condition, but his son's life was not in danger.

In Washington, meanwhile, State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Monday that whether the Kurdish regions of Iraq remain semiautonomous as part of a newly sovereign Iraq will be decided by the Iraqi people.

"This is not a decision for the Bush administration. We've said all along that it's up to the Iraqi people to determine their political future," Ereli said.

"I would say, on the subject of the Kurds, that we have always supported and will continue to support Iraq's political unity and territorial integrity. The Kurds are members of the governing council and have themselves expressed a commitment to a unified Iraq."

Capt. Kimberly Hampton is shown in a photo provided by her family taken after her graduation from Presbyterian College in 1998 in Clinton, S.C. Hampton, 27, of Easley, S.C., was killed Friday, Jan. 2, 2004, when the helicopter she was piloting was shot down in Fallujah, Iraq, making her the first female pilot casualty.(AP Photo/Family photo)

This is a photo provided by the family of Capt. Kimberly Hampton, 27, of Easley, S.C. taken in 2002 while stationed in Korea. Capt. Hampton was killed Friday, Jan. 2, 2004, when the helicopter she was piloting was shot down near Fallujah, Iraq, making her the first woman from South Carolina killed in combat in Iraq. (AP Photo/Family Photo)

Tricia Ferri, 22, of Brigantine, N.J., left, poses with her boyfriend, Army Spc. Marc Seiden, in 2003. Seiden was killed Friday, Jan. 2, 2004, while on duty in Iraq. Seiden was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. Spc. Solomon Bangayan of Vermont was also killed in the attack. (AP Photo/Ferri family photo)

This is an undated family photo of Army Spc. Solomon Bangayan, 24. He was killed Friday, Jan. 2, 2004, in Iraq when the convoy he was in was ambushed south of Baghdad. Bangayan moved to Vermont after living for 21 years in the Philippines. He lived in the town of Jay, Vt. briefly with his mother, Helen, stepfather, Victor Therrien, and younger sister, Hilda. He obtained a permanent residency visa, and shortly after joined the Army. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the family via WCAX-TV)

A US soldier stands next to Iraqi servicemen queuing to get their salaries while another Iraqi man sits on the ground in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, some 400 km northwest of Baghdad, January 5, 2004. About one thousand former Iraqi soldiers and servicemen queue at a bank in Mosul to receive their salaries every month. REUTERS/Alexander Demianchuk

A US soldier mans a machine gun as his vehicle leaves a coalition base for a mission in Tikrit. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Arabs to rise up against America and force it to retreat from Iraq.(AFP/Jewel Samad)

Iraqi Kurdish workers cutting metal to fit onto one of a hundred U.S. Army humvees, to protect them against roadside bombs and other attacks by Iraqi insurgents, in Tikrit, Iraq, Monday, Jan. 5, 2004. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Iraqi police charge at protesters in the city of Basra, some 550 kilometers south of Baghdad, Monday, Jan. 5 2004, after a jobless people protest turned into a riot. (AP Photo/Nabil Aljurani)

Iraqi police arrest a man in the city of Basra, some 550 kilometers south of Baghdad, Monday, Jan. 5 2004, after a jobless people protest turned into a riot. (AP Photo/Nabil Aljurani)

An injured US soldier is helped by fellow soldiers as he arrives at a US base for treatment in Tikrit. As the six month countdown to Iraqi sovereignty begins, the top British official in Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock, has warned that guerrillas will conduct 'big bang' attacks against the US-led coalition(AFP/File/Jewel Samad)

US paramedic soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division carry an injured solider for treatment at their base inTikrit, 180 Kilometers (110 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. According unconfirmed reports, the soldiers was shot in the leg by an unidentifed gunmen while he was taking part in a foot-patrol in Tikrit.(AFP/Jewel Samad)

A cameraman films the wooden court cage of the newly established war crimes tribunal in Baghdad, Iraq, in this Dec 10, 2003 file photo. Three days before Saddam was captured by U.S. forces on Dec. 13, the Iraqi Governing Council announced the creation of a special war crimes tribunal to try former members of Saddam's Baath regime on cases stemming from mass executions of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, as well as the suppression of uprisings by Kurds and Shiite Muslims after the 1991 Gulf War. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours, File)

U.S. Talks Iraq Guerrilla Tactics With AP

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq - Iraqi guerrillas blasting U.S. military convoys with improvised bombs hidden at roadsides may have learned tactics by talking to Chechen rebels and Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan, a U.S. Army intelligence officer told The Associated Press.

Iraqi rebels have been communicating with such outsiders through e-mail, telephone and personal visits, said Maj. Thomas Sirois, chief intelligence officer of the Army's 3rd Corps Support Command, which occupies this sprawling base north of Baghdad. He declined to identify the types of communication American intelligence officers have intercepted.

"I think they share information," Sirois said. "Individuals here who are fighting against us I'm sure are reaching out to see what has been successful in other locations, and probably trying to adapt those procedures here."

Some ambush techniques observed in Chechnya against the Russians and in Afghanistan against U.S. forces by al-Qaida and former Taliban militants "we've seen employed here" in Iraq, Sirois said.

Like Iraq, recent conflicts in Chechnya and Afghanistan saw Islamic guerrillas hiding at roadsides to ambush military convoys with booby-trapped bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

One Middle East military analyst said information being shared from Afghan and Chechen sources is probably technical assistance with fuses, remote-control detonators — like cell phones — and assembling the complex daisy-chained bombs that began appearing in Iraq in late summer.

Since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, with the March invasion, 483 American troops have died, according to the Defense Department. Of those, 330 died as a result of hostile action.

Suicide bombings blamed on Chechen separatists have killed more than 275 people in and around Chechnya and in Moscow in the past year. Russian troops in Chechnya suffer daily losses in rebel attacks and land-mine explosions.

"There will be people out there with the expertise who will be very happy to share it, because they want to see the U.S. project in Iraq fail," said Jeremy Binnie, with Jane's Sentinel Security Assessments in London. "With the technical things, there is some level of cooperation because they can get quite sophisticated."

Sirois monitors intelligence on Iraq's roads for the Army's 16,000-member 3rd Coscom, which operates the thousands of truck convoys traveling across Iraq each day, supplying U.S. military with fuel, food, water and other supplies. Attacks on the convoys grew more complex in the late summer and fall, with the number of attacks rising each month from May to November.

The number of highway ambushes — usually involving roadside bombs — began dropping in late November and through December, Sirois said. Still, on Monday, three U.S. soldiers were wounded when a bomb exploded as their convoy passed near a town north of Baghdad.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have long said they believe members of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida terror network have migrated to Iraq, but little evidence has been released to support their assertions. Sirois said he and other intelligence officers believe al-Qaida members are in Iraq but have seen no signs of Chechens or Afghans launching attacks alongside Iraqi guerrillas.

Some tactics used to attack U.S. convoys were homegrown as well, Sirois said, noting there is plenty of expertise among disaffected members of the disbanded Iraqi army.

The effectiveness of the roadside bombs, which the U.S. military calls IEDs or "improvised explosive devices," depends on them being carefully hidden on the edges of the convoy routes and detonated when an unsuspecting convoy passes.

The Army has found bombs disguised as curbs. Others have been hidden in lampposts, animal carcasses and the Army's ubiquitous brown plastic ration bags.

"We've seen some pretty ingenious disguises," Sirois told AP last week. "You name it, they hide IEDs in just about anything — tires at the sides of roads, trash piles."

At the same time, Sirois said the ambushers' influence on American convoys was slipping, with 250 attacks in November and 200 in December. Perhaps more significantly, the rebels' bombs have grown smaller, less complex and less deadly, he said.

At the height of their attacks — from late August to early November — rebels were able to interconnect 15 or more large artillery shells into a single bomb that may have been assembled and buried at the side of a highway over a period several nights or a week, he said. Some bombs used plastic explosives as well as artillery or mortar shells.

But for the past six weeks, most bombs have been smaller, sometimes a single, converted artillery or mortar round.

"Where in the past we've seen casualties and significant damage to our vehicles, lately the IEDs have been single rounds and they've done minimal damage to our vehicles," he said.

During December, the 3rd Coscom has seen one or two of its convoys attacked each day, with fewer than 10 casualties as of Dec. 30, Sirois said.

Since arriving in Iraq in late March, the 3rd Coscom has had four soldiers killed in action and 130 wounded — with the most devastating attacks taking place in late summer and fall, Sirois said.

He attributes the drop in U.S. casualties to several factors, including the killing or capture of Iraqi insurgents and the seizing of their ammunition. The military has also cleared the roadsides of brush, trees and trash, removing hiding places. Last week, U.S. soldiers could be seen bulldozing huge eucalyptus trees that line the main highway north of Camp Anaconda.

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