Posted on 05/13/2007 5:18:54 AM PDT by jern
Edited on 05/13/2007 9:40:51 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Thousands of U.S. soldiers searched Sunday for three Americans who were missing after their patrol came under attack in an explosion that killed four of their comrades and an Iraqi army translator. Two bombings — one in northern Iraq and another at a market in Baghdad — killed at least 67 Iraqis.
The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, said it had captured several soldiers in the attack, but offered no proof to back up its claim, posted on an Islamic Web site.
The search for the missing Americans began after insurgents attacked a patrol of seven U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter before dawn Saturday near Mahmoudiya.
The U.S. military said Saturday that five people were dead and three were missing.
On Sunday, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell confirmed that the Iraqi interpreter was among the dead — and that all the missing were Americans. He said about 4,000 U.S. troops were involved in the search.
Caldwell said the bodies of the three slain soldiers and the Iraqi interpreter had been identified, but the military was still working to identify the fifth.
"Everybody is fully engaged, the commanders are intimately focused on this, every asset we have from national assets to tactical assets ... are being used ... to locate these three missing soldiers," Caldwell said.
Mahmoudiya is about 20 miles south of Baghdad in an al-Qaida-dominated area known as the "triangle of death." Two U.S. soldiers were massacred there last year after they disappeared at a checkpoint.
President Bush has been getting regular updates on the missing soldiers, Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said in Washington.
Meanwhile, a suicide truck bomber crashed into the offices of a Kurdish political party, killing at least 50 people, including the police chief, and wounding scores, officials said. It was the second suicide attack in Kurdish areas of the north in four days.
The suicide truck bombing in Makhmur, 30 miles south of Irbil, badly damaged the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Makhmur is just south of the autonomous Kurdish-controlled areas, but it has a substantial Kurdish population.
The blast also killed the police chief and damaged the mayor's office, officials said.
Ziryan Othman, the health minister of the Kurdish regional government, said at least 50 people were killed and 115 were wounded, including the city's mayor.
Cars were charred and crushed by the blast, with some flipped over. The tires of one appeared to have been incinerated. Most of the small KDP building appeared to have been destroyed, reduced to a pile of bricks. Other buildings had walls blown out.
A group of people hurriedly pulled a body from a demolished car.
Outside the hospital in Irbil, security guards closed the hospital to visitors and read a list containing the names of the wounded who had been admitted.
Hearing the names of his son and daughter, Qassim Amin, 61, a Kurd, thanked God that they had not been killed. Both are employees at the KDP party office, he said.
"Makhmur is an open, peaceful area, and al-Qaida is trying to destabilize it by causing fighting between Arabs and Kurds," Amin said.
In Baghdad, a parked car exploded near the popular Sadriyah market, killing at least 17 people and wounding 46, police said. The area has been hit by several blasts usually blamed on suspected Sunni insurgents, including a car bombing on April 18 that killed 127 people.
AP Television News footage showed a crater in the ground filled with debris, splintered wood, metal and a tire. A white truck appeared to be crumpled by the blast.
With violence on the rise, Caldwell also announced that an additional 3,000 forces have been sent to Diyala province, scene of heavy fighting.
Last week, the top U.S. commander in the north, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, said the U.S. didn't have enough troops to restore order in Diyala but more had been promised.
"There is a recognition clearly that up in Diyala there has been an uptick in the violence," Caldwell said at a news conference in Baghdad.
On Sunday, Iraqi gunmen drove into the Diyala capital of Baqouba, pulled two handcuffed men out of the trunk and shot them to death — one in view of a bustling market and the other near a movie theater, police and witnesses said.
"This is the destiny of traitors," the gunmen yelled as they shot their victims.
Three other civilians also were killed execution-style in a market in the city center, police said.
I am praying also, but my stomach hurts badly for these kids!
Has anyone in the house or senate made a statement yet?
Thanks for the ping Patty. The 10th Mountain Division is based at Fort Drum, NY which is about an hour or so north of me. When I was back in Rochester recently taking care of my sister, I ran into a member of the 10th Mtn. Division while making a run to the bank. I thanked him profusely for his service and told him that we are all praying for our troops. He and his wife are both career Army. Both have been in Iraq. He’s an MP, and has been doing special recruiting duty recently, but will be going back overseas, this time to Afghanistan. They have two children...a boy and a girl. I told him about Free Republic, and about the Merry Band of Patriots who have been sending packages to the troops. He said that the soldiers really appreciate what the folks back home have been doing for them. He said the one thing the troops need to know is that the people back home haven’t forgotten them. I wished him and his family well, told them to stay safe and that I’d be praying for them all. It was a very uplifting experience for me, and I get all choked up just talking about it.
ping to jeffers,,,`O Kind Sir,,,do you have a topo-map
of this area or links to some better maps...TANKS...
I don't disagree, and if this one situation could galvanize us, then all the better. But I think it's six years overdue.
The CIC really has to be careful what he says. He can’t give the terrorists the idea that he will negotiate for the soldiers. Anything he say might make things worse for the soldiers. My guess is he won’t say anything except in the most vague of ways until things are resolved.
He can give us a speech here at home.
If he says anything, it will be on the Internet an in al-Qaeda’s ears in 1/2 hour.
We're not dealing with the Geneva Convention here.
How can this be??? Anti-war people say there are NO AlQaeda in Iraq fro us to be fighting a War on Terror there. Remember, this is supposed to be an excuse Bush used to invade Iraq.
According to the MSM Al-Queda is not in Iraq.
If we hadn’t lost kattracks, we probably would have adopted the 2/10th MTN DIV at Baghdad.
We send care packages to a unit of the 10th Mountain in 2001 while they were still at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo before they first went to Afghanistan.
Still praying.
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