24 MORE dead in attack on U.S. base in Iraq
Explosion rips through mess hall near Mosul; more than 60 wounded
Dean Hoffmeyer / Richmond Times-Dispatch
Workers and U.S. soldiers tend to the wounded Tuesday after an rocket attack on a crowded dining hall at a U.S. base in Mosul, Iraq.
NBC News and news services
Updated: 2:04 p.m. ET Dec. 21, 2004In one of the dealiest single attacks against coalition forces in Iraq, an explosion tore through a crowded dining hall at a U.S. base near the Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing 24 people and wounding more than 60 others, military officials said. The blast knocked soldiers out of their seats and killed at least 13 American soldiers, according to a reporter on the scene.
The dead included U.S. military personnel, U.S. contractors, foreign national contractors and Iraqi army soldiers, said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia in Mosul.
Jeremy Redmon, a Richmond (Va). Times-Dispatch reporter embedded with U.S. troops in Mosul, reported on the newspaper's Web site that a rocket or rockets struck a large tented mess hall at Forward Operating Base Marez, about 3 miles south of the city, at lunchtime as it was crowded with hundreds of soldiers and some civilians. Multiple explosions from the rockets sprayed shrapnel and knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats, Redmon said.
Cause of blast under investigation
But Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia, said later that the cause of what he said was a "single explosion" remained under investigation.
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"We do not know if it was a mortar or a(n) ... explosive," he said.
The radical Muslim group that claimed responsibility for the attack, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, also described the attack as a "martyrdom operation," a term usually employed to describe a suicide bombing.
U.S. officials were still sorting out details of the attack, which was claimed by a radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army.
Ham, calling it a "very, very sad day," said in a televised statement from Mosul that "more than 20" people were killed and more than 60 wounded.
Death toll put at 24
But Hastings later told CNN that the toll was 24 dead.
Officials could not yet provide a breakdown on the nationalities or occupations of the dead, but Redmon reported that 13 U.S. soldiers were among those killed.
Dean Hoffmeyer / Richmond Times-Dispatch
A hole in the roof of a tent lights smoke moments after Tuesday's artillery attack at Forward Operating Base Marez.
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If the death toll is confirmed, the attack would be the deadliest single strike against coalition troops in Iraq. The largest single loss of life occurred on Nov. 12, 2003, when 19 Italians died in an attack at a police station in Nassiriyah.
Redmon reported that at least two members of the 276th Engineer Battalion, based in Richmond, Va., were killed in the attack. Reporters from Portland, Maine, also embedded with the troops said that two members of the Maine National Guard's 133rd Engineering Battalion also had died and "10 or more" had been injured.
The U.S. Army's Task Force Olympia is based in this predominantly Sunni Muslim city and is largely made up of troops from Fort Lewis, Wash., as well as soldiers from Albania and Australia. Officials at Fort Lewis scheduled a 2 p.m. ET news conference to discuss the attack.
A statement claiming responsibility for the attack posted on an Islamic Web Site that was attributed to Ansar al-Sunnah labeled it a "martyrdom operation."
‘A big killing’
“God helped the mujahadeen … fighting the enemies of God, the occupiers, with a big killing in the ranks of the Americans,” it said.
The group, believed to be a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim group that aims to turn Iraq into a tightly controlled Islamic state , has previously claimed responsibility for the beheading of 12 Nepalese hostages.
Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, has seen incessant violence for the past few weeks since Sunni Arab insurgents routed the U.S.-trained police force in November while many U.S. forces were concentrated on storming guerrilla bases in Fallujah.
Ethnic tensions have also been inflamed in a city that is home to both Arabs and Kurds.
There has been speculation that Jordanian al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once active around Fallujah had moved some of his operations to the Mosul area.
The city, 240 miles north of Baghdad, was home to some loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s old regime. Saddam’s two elder sons were hiding there when they were surrounded and killed by U.S. troops in July last year.
Earlier on Tuesday, Hastings said Iraqi police had repelled a new attack by insurgents on a Mosul police station.
“The Iraqi police successfully repelled the attack denying insurgents access to the station. This is the sixth time since Nov. 10 where insurgents have tried but failed to overrun police stations,” he said.
Gunmen have roamed parts of Mosul with ease in recent weeks.
Last week, five Turkish security guards from Ankara’s embassy in Baghdad and two of their Iraqi drivers were killed when a convoy was ambushed in the northern city. One of the men was decapitated in full view of onlookers on the street.
More attacks
In other violence on Tuesday, a U.S. jet bombed a suspected insurgent target in central Iraq and gunmen assassinated an Iraqi nuclear scientist north of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, 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.
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Dec. 21: As British Prime Minister Tony Blair pays a surprise visit to Iraq, insurgents launch a deadly rocket attack on a U.S. base near Mosul. NBC’s Ned Colt reports.
MSNBC
The bloodshed came as British Prime Minister Tony Blair paid a surprise visit to Baghdad, where he met interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
On Monday, Allawi blamed the upsurge of violence on a campaign by insurgents to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail legislative elections set for Jan. 30.
Allawi said the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents, blamed for Sunday’s bombings in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, want to “create ethnic and religious tensions, problems and conflicts ... to destroy the unity of this country.”
The coordinated bombings killed 67 people and injured almost 200 in one of the bloodiest attacks on civilians this year.
NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and Carl Rochelle at the Pentagon, and Robert Windrem in New York, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
