Posted on 07/08/2004 5:39:01 AM PDT by TexKat
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrillas killed three U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi guard in a mortar attack on National Guard headquarters in Samarra, north of Baghdad, Thursday.
The latest violence erupted a day after Iraq's interim government announced a new security law giving itself tougher powers to combat a bloody insurgency wracking the country.
Eighteen U.S. soldiers and three Iraqi guards were also wounded when guerrillas fired four mortar rounds at the Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Samarra, severely damaging the building, also used by U.S. troops, a military spokesman said. The 1st Infantry Division spokesman said U.S. forces used radar to locate the source of the mortar fire and responded with four 120-mm mortar rounds. Reuters television pictures showed U.S. helicopters apparently firing at targets in the town.
The deaths in Samarra, a mainly Sunni Muslim town 60 miles north of Baghdad, brought to 649 the U.S. combat toll in Iraq since the start of last year's war.
The Iraqi National Guard, renamed by the interim government, is a 40,000-strong paramilitary force set up during the U.S.-led occupation, when it was known as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
In Baghdad, police said an explosive device detonated in a vehicle in the southern Dora district, killing one person. They had initially described the blast as a car bomb attack.
SPATE OF HOSTAGE-TAKING
Kidnappers also kept up the pressure on Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government, threatening to kill a Filipino hostage unless Manila withdraws its troops from Iraq.
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (news - web sites) ordered no more workers to go to Iraq after Arabic Al Jazeera television on Wednesday showed footage of a Filipino in the hands of gunmen who set a 72-hour deadline for their demands to be met.
There was continued uncertainty over the fate of a Lebanese-born U.S. marine who went missing in Iraq on June 21.
Relatives of Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun said they had no news of his whereabouts, though Beirut's U.S. embassy said it had credible information the marine was in Lebanon.
Hassoun was thought to have been kidnapped and Tuesday his relatives in north Lebanon said they had received word he had been released. But his brother, Sami Hassoun, told Reuters Thursday there had been no news since.
Kidnappers have seized dozens of foreigners since April to press demands for foreign troops to leave Iraq, to deter foreigners from working with U.S. forces or to extract ransom.
Many hostages have been freed, but at least four have been killed, including an American and a South Korean beheaded by a group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Ministers met in emergency session in Manila, but made no decision on how to respond to the demand that the Philippines withdraw its force of about 50 humanitarian workers in what would be a symbolic blow to U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.
ABS-CBN television station identified the hostage, shown by Al Jazeera dressed in an orange jumpsuit and kneeling before three gunmen, as Angelo dela Cruz, who worked as a truck driver.
Apart from its small military contingent, the Philippines, a staunch Asian ally of the United States, has about 4,300 civilian workers in Iraq, many of them employed by contractors and working in U.S. military bases.
An Iraqi boy looks out from the window of his destroyed family house in Baghdad. Three US soldiers and one Iraqi national guardsman were killed, while another 18 US troops and three Iraqis were wounded, in a mortar strike that collapsed the Iraqi national guard headquarters in Samarra.(AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)
Thursday, July 8, 2004 Posted: 1201 GMT (2001 HKT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four U.S. troops and an Iraqi National Guardsman were killed Thursday in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, according to a U.S. military spokesman in Tikrit.
Twenty soldiers and three Iraqis were wounded. One U.S. soldier is missing.
The strike took place at 10:30 a.m., collapsing the National Guard headquarters, which is frequently used by soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division.
The 1st Infantry Division and Iraqi security services patrol the area. First Infantry Division radars located the point from which the mortars were fired and shot back with four 120 mm rounds.
Samarra is 120 kilometers (about 75 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq reads a statement in a tape obtained July 8, 2004, saying it was behind the March shooting of four U.S. contractors in Falluja, but said its gunmen left before the bodies were burnt. The four men who worked for a private U.S security firm were ambushed by guerrillas on March 31 as they drove through Falluja, a hotbed of insurgency against U.S. forces. The tape appeared to be the first claim of responsibility for the deaths in Falluja, 32 miles (50 km) west of Baghdad. REUTERS/Handout
If it weren't so serious there would be something comical about the men in that picture.
Oh God, this tragic loss of our brave men and women has got to stop.
And... ?
A US Blackhawk helicopter from the Medical Evacuation Unit (MEDEVAC) flies over Baghdad. At least six Iraqis and four US soldiers were killed in fresh violence in the insurgency hotbed of Samarra, north of the capital.(AFP/Saeed Khan)
A U.S. Army soldier surveys the wreckage of a destroyed car after an explosion in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of al-Dora, July 8, 2004. Iraqi police said on Thursday that at least one civilian was killed when an explosive device detonated in his vehicle went off in the southern Dora district. The civilian was described as a former top Saddam's Baath party member. REUTERS/Akram Saleh
US soldier sits in an armored vehicle during a patrol in central Baghdad. Violence flared in Baghdad as the new interim government unveiled sweeping security measures aimed at crushing a tenacious insurgency.(AFP/Karim Sahib)
A US soldier driving an armored vehicle gestures to Iraqi people during a patrol in Baghdad. The US military's post-sovereignty strategy in Iraq is a confusing jumble of hands-on involvement in local politics and clear disengagement from cities considered strongholds of the resistance.(AFP/Karim Sahib)
An Iraqi police officer investigates the covered bodies of two truck drivers who were killed when their convoy came under attack near a U.S base outside the city of Sammara, 120km north of Baghdad, July 8, 2004. At least two truck drivers were killed, one Turkish and one Iraqi, when their convoy came under attack by insurgents a few kilometers south of Sammara. Earlier today five U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi guards were killed in a mortar attack on the Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Samarra, the U.S. Army said. REUTERS/Ali Jasim
An Iraqi policeman stands at the site of a roadside bomb that went off prematurely, destroying a civilian car and killing it's occupant in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, July 8, 2004.(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
An Iraqi policeman inspects a charred vehicle belonging to Ali Abas, a high-ranking official from Saddam Hussein's former Baath party, who was killed when his car exploded in a bomb attack on the outskirts of Baghdad.(AFP/Roslan Rahman)
An Iraqi police officer surveys the covered bodies of two truck drivers who were killed when their convoy came under attack outside the city of Sammara, 120km north of Baghdad July 8, 2004. At least two truck drivers were killed, one Turkish and one Iraqi when their convoy came under attack by insurgents. Earlier today five U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi guards were killed in a mortar attack on the Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Samarra, the U.S. Army said. REUTERS/Ali Jasim
And Bush is a goner if it doesn't.
Note the location of the attack. Does this not clarify to Iraqis that the insurgents are the bad guys who do not have their security interests at heart?
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