Posted on 09/10/2003 6:54:17 AM PDT by BenLurkin
IRBIL, Iraq - A suicide bomber exploded in an SUV outside the U.S. intelligence headquarters, killing three other Iraqis and wounding dozens, including four Americans, a Kurdish security official said Wednesday.
The U.S. military in Baghdad had said six Americans were wounded but later said four intelligence officers were hurt along with a Kurdish peshmerga guard at the building.
The Kurdish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the vehicle was filled with TNT. He also said several homes in the neighborhood, which was cordoned off by U.S. soldiers, were destroyed.
He blamed al-Qaida for Tuesday's attack but gave no reason for that assessment. Nobody has claimed responsibility.
The Ansar al-Islam organization, with suspected ties to al-Qaida, was formerly based near Sulaymaniyah, about 30 miles east of Irbil and near the Iranian border.
Ansar headquarters was bombed by U.S. jets during the war and surviving members of the group were thought to have fled to Iran. They are now believed to have returned to Iraq.
A witness to the attack, Jafar Marouf, a 31-year-old teacher, was visiting a friend Tuesday night on the quiet residential street when he saw a white KIA four-wheel drive approach quickly, then explode with the driver inside. Marouf was slightly injured and spoke with the AP in the hospital.
Near Baghdad, a U.S. soldier was killed and one was wounded Tuesday evening when a homemade bomb exploded near a military vehicle on a supply route northeast of the capital, the U.S. Central Command said Wednesday.
The death was the first to be reported by the U.S. military in eight days, although sporadic attacks had continued against occupying forces.
The soldiers were from the U.S. Army's 3rd Corps Support Command, according to the military. The wounded soldier was evacuated to a field hospital.
U.S. soldiers, who had flown to the site by helicopter and were guarding the area with local Iraqi Kurdish fighters, refused to give any information.
The Kurdish official said a 12-year-old Iraqi boy was among those who died in the bombing, which also killed the attacker, and 41 Iraqis were wounded, including children from nearby houses and Iraqi Kurdish guards.
Three of the wounded Americans suffered serious abdominal injuries from flying glass, the official said.
The Kurdish security official said U.S. intelligence officers worked in the bombed building, with some of the top officers also sleeping there. Others had quarters in two villas about 500 yards down the street.
"It was a blasphemy to put their base in a civilian neighborhood," said Najib Abdullah, 50, the manager of a gas station nearby. He said he was in his office counting the days proceeds when the blast occurred. "The whole neighborhood shook. Chunks of concrete were falling from the sky."
Television pictures from Tuesday night showed Kurdish women wailing and men running in panic with a burning car behind them. A Kurdish man could be seen carrying a toddler with a bleeding head in his arms.
The footage also showed the four-wheel-drive vehicle that apparently carried the bomb was intact but badly burned. Its chassis was in one piece.
Authorities in Irbil, about 200 miles north of Baghdad, called to residents over loudspeakers to donate blood for the wounded, CNN-Turk television said Tuesday night.
Northern Iraq has been the most stable part of the country since the U.S.-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein in April.
For the third time in two weeks, anti-tank rockets were fired at, but missed, the headquarters of Denmark's 400-man military contingent in southern Iraq, the Danish military said Wednesday.
No one was wounded in the failed attack, Denmark's Army Operational Command said.
Also Tuesday, Iraq's acting president Ahmad Chalabi called for Turkey to send as many as 10,000 peacekeeping troops under a U.N. mandate, providing they are deployed in the far west of the country away from Kurdish territory.
The invitation contradicts Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's new foreign minister and a member of the Kurdish minority, who has said neighboring countries should not send peacekeepers.
Spokesman Entifadh Kanbar also announced that Chalabi, the member of the Governing Council's nine-member presidency who is serving at the helm for September, had been invited by the Turkish government to pay "a very important visit."
"We are welcoming the participation of Turkish forces under the United Nations resolution ... in the western area in Iraq under the condition that this force should not exceed ten thousand," Kanbar said.
A Turkish force in Iraq is an extremely sensitive issue because of the large Kurdish population near the Turkish border, where some Kurdish rebels took refuge in the remote mountains after fighting a 15-year rebellion in Turkey.
An estimated 37,000 people died in that fighting, and Turkey is concerned that instability in Iraq could re-ignite the war. Turks and Kurds have a centuries old animosity. Turkey also is worried the Iraqi Kurds may be trying to carve out a separate homeland in northern Iraq that could inspire Turkish Kurds.
Turks overwhelmingly opposed the war in Iraq and many question whether their soldiers should risk dying for a mission they largely don't support. The government is weighing a request to parliament to send troops, under heavy pressure from the United States, but is keenly aware that such a move could divide the ruling party and threaten the government's stability.
Yet the influential Turkish military supports sending a force.
"The legitimacy (of the U.S.-led invasion) can be debated, but that's in the past now," said Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, head of the military. "If the United States is unsuccessful and there is instability there, this will concern Turkey."
This is obviously the work of an organization rather than rag-tags. Whoever we're fighting there- whether it be Saddam's Baathists or al Qaeda apparantly see our intelligence apparatus as a dire threat.
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