Car Bomb West of Baghdad Kills at Least 17
By EDWARD WONG
Published: December 14, 2003
HALDIYA, Iraq, Dec. 14 — Just 12 hours after Saddam Hussein was captured, a car bomb exploded outside the police station in this town 60 miles west of Baghdad, and military officials said at least 17 people were killed and 33 wounded. It was the deadliest attack on American-led forces since two police stations near Baghdad were hit with car bombs three weeks ago.
What will happen to the guerrilla fighters staging such attacks, and whether the attacks will continue at the current rate and scale, are some of the questions surrounding Mr. Hussein's capture.
Athough some of the anti-American fighters could now be demoralized, experts on insurgency and terrorism said many would likely carry on the war, especially since the fighters seem to be organized in cells rather than under a central authority.
In the short term, there is a good chance that the guerrillas will stage a wave of retaliatory attacks, the experts say.
"We do not believe at this time we will have a complete elimination of these attacks," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of American forces in Iraq, said at a news conference this afternoon.
It was unclear whether guerrillas who attacked the police station here knew of Mr. Hussein's capture the previous night, since that news was not announced until today. But at the very least, the bombing here showed that the imprisonment of Mr. Hussein had done nothing to stop the attack.
"An insurgency is about more than one person," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corporation. "An insurgency gains traction because of fundamental grievances among a population that are exploited by the fighters."
The car bomb in Khaldiya exploded at 8:32 a.m., in a town where anger at the American occupation runs high. Many people here are Sunni Muslims, the group ousted from power when the Americans deposed Mr. Hussein. In September, attackers here assassinated the police chief.
An American Army officer at the bombing scene, Lt. Col. Jeff Swisher, said 17 police officers were killed and 33 people wounded. But the director of the hospital morgue in the nearby town of Ramadi said he had counted 21 bodies, including that of at least one civilian — a young boy — who had been walking past the station when the car bomb detonated.
Lt. Col. Swisher said there was "some evidence" that a person was in the car. The bomb had detonated when police officers were changing shifts, maximizing the human toll. A couple of hours after the explosion, more than 100 soldiers, many in Humvees and tanks, had blocked off the station, keeping away furious onlookers. People were spreading rumors that the Americans had bombed the station from the air.
A concrete wall near the station entrance had been almost entirely destroyed. A mass of twisted metal was all that remained of a white sedan parked outside. Next to it, water had gathered in a 12-foot-wide crater formed by the explosion.
"After I get my salary this month, I'm quitting," said Ahmed Mohamed, one of the 150 or so police officers who work at the station.
At 11:45 a.m., dozens of men walked past the station carrying a coffin with the body of Muthana Abdulhameed, one of the dead police officers. "God is great, America is the enemy of God," the men chanted.
Police officers and friends who had gathered at the hospital morgue in Ramadi were just as incensed at the American occupiers. They took visitors into a room and uncovered the body of a police captain, his face and shredded chest caked with blood. His eyes were still open.
A body wrapped in a white rug lay in the blood-drenched hallway, next to an empty coffin. In the main room of the morgue, three adult bodies wrapped entirely in white cloth and one naked boy lay on gurneys or on the floor, near piles of bloody rags. The boy, no older than 10, had shrapnel marks across his entire body. His right ankle had been nearly blown off.
Mr. Hoffman, the terrorism expert at RAND, said he believed the "daily dynamism of the attacks, of using these attacks as a spoiler or destabilizing power," will go on, despite the capture of Mr. Hussein. And the hostility of the Sunnis will remain high, he said, because their feelings of disenfranchisement will continue.
Anthony H. Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said many of the guerrilla fighters were likely motivated by forces that go beyond loyalty to Mr. Hussein. They despise the American occupation, and many — especially the foreign fighters — could be fighting for a pan-Arab or pro-Islamic cause, he said. With that as inspiration, the capture of Mr. Hussein does little to dampen their resolve. |
