Mosul attack kills 13, wounds more than 50
BY JEREMY REDMON
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Workers and U.S. soldiers tend to the wounded after an apparent
insurgent mortar attack on a dining facility during lunchtime on FOB
Marez in Mosul, Iraq today. (Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Dean Hoffmeyer)FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq – Insurgents hit a dining hall tent at a U.S. military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul today with a suspected rocket attack, killing 13 soldiers, including two from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion.
More than 50 were wounded; civilians may have been among them. It was around noon and hundreds of soldiers had just sat down for lunch.
The force of the explosions knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and shrapnel sprayed into the men.
Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot.
"Medic! Medic!" soldiers shouted.
Medics rushed into the tent and hustled the rest of the wounded out on stretchers.
Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters outside. Others wobbled around the tent and collapsed, dazed by the blast.
"I can’t hear! I can’t hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.
Near the front entrance to the chow hall, troops tended a soldier with a gaping head wound. Within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.
The military asked that the dead not be identified until families could be notified.
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