Baghdad Blast Kills U.S. Soldier, 2 Kids
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and two children in Baghdad on Sunday, a day after a coordinated guerrilla onslaught in the southern city of Karbala left 13 dead and almost 200 injured.
The Baghdad blast also injured five U.S. soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter as well as eight members of the Iraqi civil defense corps, said U.S. Army Sgt. Patrick Compton of the Army's 1st Armored Division.
All the U.S. casualties were from the Army's 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which were on patrol in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada.
"It was a bad one," Compton said. "It's a real densely populated area of town."
On Saturday, rebels in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Karbala launched the biggest rebel attack since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein, with suicide bombers and assailants with mortars and grenade launchers hammering coalition military bases and the governor's office.
Six coalition soldiers, six Iraqi police officers and a civilian died. At least 172 people, many of them civilians caught in the chaos, were injured. Four of the soldiers were Bulgarian and two were Thai - believed to be Thailand's first overseas combat deaths since the Vietnam War.
The attack appeared designed to undermine the resolve of U.S. allies soldiering in Iraq.
In Thailand on Sunday, government and military officials debated the wisdom of the Thai deployment, with one senator calling for a withdrawal of the 422 Thai troops sent provide medical aid and rebuilding help. Thailand's prime minister vowed Sunday to keep his nation's troops in Iraq.
The Thai and Bulgarian troops form part of a multinational force of 9,500 soldiers led by Poland that controls south-central Iraq. Its commander, Gen. Andrzej Tyszkiewicz called the ambush the most serious attack suffered by coalition forces in that region.
"It was a coordinated, massive attack planned on a big scale and intended to do much harm," Tyszkiewicz said.
Insurgents might also have targeted Karbala, south of Baghdad, on the assumption that military targets there would be more vulnerable to attack. Most rebel assaults occur in Sunni Muslim areas north and west of Baghdad, where combat-tested American troops have more experience fending off suicide bombers and other ambushers.
One of four suicide bombers in Karbala gained entry to a Bulgarian camp, cutting through roadblocks in a car and destroying a building where the unit headquarters was located, Bulgarian Deputy Defense Minister Ilko Dimitrov said in Sofia.
Four Bulgarian soldiers were killed and 27 others were wounded, Dimitrov said.
"We expected these attacks because Karbala was suspiciously peaceful," said Nikola Kolev, the Bulgarian army chief of staff.
Bulgaria, a staunch supporter of the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, has a 485-member light infantry battalion in Iraq.
The two Thai soldiers killed were on guard duty when the vehicle rammed into their camp's wall, a Thai spokesman said in Bangkok.
Six Iraqi police officers and an Iraqi woman living next to one of the military bases were killed in Karbala, said Ali al-Arzawi, deputy director of the General Hospital. Some 135 Iraqi civilians and police officers also were wounded, many lightly, he said.
In Baghdad, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said a total of 37 coalition soldiers, including five Americans, were injured.
After the attacks, U.S. troops sealed off the debris-strewn area around the governor's office. Three destroyed cars lay in the street. At the hospital, crying people crowded the corridors, searching for missing family members.
"I was in the front office when I heard a loud explosion," Wahab Abdel Hussain, a 45-year-old desk officer at the governor's office, said from his hospital bed as blood ran down his face. "Shattered glass hit me in the face and then I passed out. I woke up in the hospital."
Mohamed Jassim, 50, said he was about to enter the governor's office to try to settle a land dispute when a car bomb exploded, injuring his hand.
"I was knocked out on the floor by the explosion," he said. He blamed supporters of Saddam.
Despite the attacks in Karbala, where Saddam conducted a bloody crackdown on Shiite opponents in 1991, U.S. military officials said the number of rebel assaults has dropped from about 50 a day in mid-September to an average of about 15 a day, spiking to 18 on Christmas Day.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
