Posted on 03/13/2004 11:56:07 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Iraq - A roadside bomb killed two American soldiers and wounded three Saturday, the first casualties suffered by an Army regiment taking over security in Saddam Hussein's hometown as part of a giant troop rotation. In Baghdad, the brother-in-law of a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council was killed when a bomb exploded in a shop Saturday, an official said. The bomb destroyed the troops' armored Humvee as they patrolled through downtown Tikrit at around 5 a.m., hours before the outgoing 4th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment handed over security duties in the area from to the 18th Infantry Regiment at a ceremony on Saturday. In the attack, gunmen opened fire on the rear vehicle in the three-Humvee patrol, then the bomb went off by the second Humvee, said one of the soldiers at the scene. A Bradley fighting vehicle sped to the scene and strafed the area with heavy machine gun fire. It was unclear if any of the attackers sustained casualties. After the attack, about 50 soldiers fanned out through the city searching for evidence and asking locals for information about the attack. The three wounded soldiers were evacuated to a military hospital north of Tikrit and were in stable condition, said 1st Infantry Division spokeswoman Maj. Debra Stewart. Roadside bombs have become the main threat to U.S. soldiers on patrol in the Sunni Triangle, a region north and west of Baghdad that has seen some of the fiercest guerrilla fighting. Three soldiers were killed and three wounded Thursday by bombs in Baqouba and near the town of Habbaniyah. Saturday's deaths brought to 560 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. Of those, 381 died as a result of hostile action and 179 died of non-hostile causes, the department said. In the Baghdad shop bombing, Iraqi police confirmed that one man was killed and another was wounded. An aide to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite member of the Governing Council, identified the slain victim as al-Jaafari's brother-in-law, Haidar al-Qazwini. Capt. Abbas Nima of the Iraqi police said one unidentified man left a bag containing explosives in the shop before it blew up. The U.S. military in Iraq is about halfway through the biggest troop rotation in its history, pulling out 130,000 troops _ some of whom have been here since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Soldiers who have been on the front line facing the anti-U.S. insurgency _ believed led by Saddam loyalists and Islamic militants _ have been carrying out joint patrols with the newcomers, trying to acquaint them with the landscape. Saturday was only the second day that troops from the 18th Regiment have been patrolling alone, without members of the 22nd. Some 700 troops from the 18th Regiment arrived in Tikrit within the last month to replace a similar number of troops from the outgoing unit, which has been patrolling the city, 85 miles north of Baghdad, since it fell to U.S. forces in April. Concerns have been raised about the possibility of insurgents' infiltrating Iraqi security forces after U.S. troops discovered that four Iraqis suspected in the killing of two American officials and their translator were apparently active policemen. The four were caught along with a former officer from the Saddam-era police forces and a civilian after the slayings Tuesday of the two U.S.-led coalition staffers and an Iraqi woman near the town of Hillah, south of Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. Coalition spokesman Dan Senor called the policemen's role in the attack "an exception" and defended what he called a "robust" process of vetting police recruits to try to uncover criminal pasts or links to Saddam's regime. "But it is not perfect," he said. "Individuals slip through the cracks. We act to identify it and remove them immediately." FBI experts were investigating the attack that killed the three, amid conflicting reports over the shooting outside the town of Hillah. Polish troops patrolling the region said the police stopped the victims' car at a checkpoint and shot them to death. Kimmitt, however, said the attackers may have been in a second car that ran the coalition staffers off the road. The American civilians were the first from the U.S. occupation authority to be killed in Iraq. One was Fern Holland, 33, a human rights expert from Oklahoma who worked on women's issues in the Hillah region. The other was a regional press officer, Robert J. Zangas, 44, of suburban Pittsburgh. U.S. officials have trained more than 70,000 Iraqi police officers, as well as some 25,000 members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in a matter of months. Recruits undergo an eight-week training program, while veteran officers have three weeks of training on new techniques and democratic principles, Senor said. Recruits are vetted, but records for criminal activity or past links to Saddam's regime are scattered and difficult to track down. In Baghdad, another 451 Iraqi men and one woman graduated from the police academy on Saturday after completing training sponsored by the U.S. military.
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