Feeding Amerikan Schweinen Fallujahed Into Sausage




Dec. 21, 2004



Deadly Attack On U.S. Base


U.S. soldiers help a wounded comrade out after an attack on a mess hall during lunchtime at a base in Mosul. (Photo: AP)


The blast tore a hole in the roof moments after the attack. (Photo: AP)


Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, right, shakes hands with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who visited Iraq Tuesday. (Photo: AP /APTN)





(CBS/AP) Rockets struck a mess tent at a military base in Mosul where hundreds of U.S. soldiers had just sat down to lunch Tuesday, and a Pentagon official said at least 22 people were killed and 50 were wounded. A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility.

The attack came the same day that British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Baghdad and described the ongoing violence in Iraq as a "battle between democracy and terror."

Jeremy Redmon, a reporter for the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch embedded with the troops in Mosul, said 13 soldiers were killed in the attack at Forward Operating Base Marez, including two from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion. More than 50 people were wounded, and civilians may have been among them, he said.

The base, also known as the al-Ghizlani military camp, is used by both U.S. troops and the interim Iraqi government's security forces.

In other developments:


FBI memos released by the American Civil Liberties Union describe harsh interrogation techniques used in Iraq, and suggest they were approved by President Bush.


Two French journalists who were kidnapped by a radical Islamic group in Iraq four months ago were released Tuesday, Al-Jazeera television network reported. Christian Chesnot, a 37-year-old journalist for RTL, or Radio France Internationale, and Georges Malbrunot, 41, of the daily Le Figaro, disappeared Aug. 20.


In Baqouba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, unidentified assailants shot dead an Iraqi nuclear scientist as he was on his way to work, witnesses said. Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher, a professor at Diyala University, was killed as he drove over a bridge on the Khrisan river. His car swerved and plummeted into the water.


Five American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were wounded when the Humvee they were traveling in was hit by a car bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.


A U.S. aircraft engaged an "enemy position" with precision-guided missiles west of Baghdad, the military said. Hamdi Al-Alosi, a doctor in a hospital in the city of Hit, said four people were killed and seven injured in the strike.

After the attack at the Mosul base, scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters, while others wandered around in a daze and collapsed, Redmon said.

Amid the screaming and thick smoke in the tent, soldiers turned their tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot, he said.

"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.

The shelling blew a huge hole in the roof of the tent, and puddles of blood, lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor, Redmond reported.

Near the front entrance, troops tended a soldier with a serious head wound, but within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag, he said. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. The Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for beheading 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul, which is 220 miles north of Baghdad.

Mosul was the scene of the deadliest single incident for U.S. troops in Iraq. On Nov. 15, 2003, two Black Hawk helicopters collided over the city, killing 17 soldiers and injuring five. The crash occurred as the two choppers maneuvered to avoid ground fire from insurgents.

Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year. But insurgent attacks in the largely Sunni Arab area have increased dramatically in the past year and particularly since the U.S.-led military operation in November to retake the restive city of Fallujah from militants.

Since Nov. 10, about 160 people in and around Mosul have been murdered, including many affiliated with the Iraqi National Guard and police.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of students demonstrated in the center of the city, demanding that U.S. troops cease breaking into homes and mosques there.

Also Tuesday, Iraqi security forces repelled another attack by insurgents trying to seize a police station in the center of the city, the U.S. military said.

During his visit, Blair held talks with Allawi and Iraqi election officials, whom he called heroes for carrying out their work despite attacks. Three members of Iraq's election commission were dragged from the car and killed this week in Baghdad.

Blair, who has paid a political price for going to war in Iraq, defended the role of Britain's 8,000 troops by referring to terrorism.

"If we defeat it here, we deal it a blow worldwide," he said. "If Iraq is a stable and democratic country, that is good for the Middle East, and what is good for the Middle East, is actually good for the world, including Britain.

"Whatever people's feelings and beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror," he said.

Allawi said his government was committed to holding the elections as scheduled, despite calls for their postponement owing to the violence.

"We have always expected that the violence would increase as we approach the elections," Allawi said. "We now are on the verge, for the first time in history, of having democracy in action in this country."

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/iraq/main541815.shtml