Iraq Mortar Attack Kills 2 U.S. Soldiers
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By VIJAY JOSHI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two U.S. soldiers were killed in a mortar and rocket barrage on a camp in central Iraq (news - web sites), U.S. officials said Thursday.
In separate incidents, gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying Iraqi women who worked in the laundry at a U.S. military base, killing four of them, and the security chief of Spanish troops was wounded during a raid south of the capital.
Elsewhere, gunmen firing from a van killed two Iraqi policemen and wounded three others in an attack Thursday on a checkpoint between Fallujah and Ramadi in the tense region west of Baghdad, police said.
Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division, said insurgents fired mortars and rockets at a U.S. military encampment outside the town of Baqouba on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and critically injuring another. The three were standing outside the operations center when the projectiles landed, she said.
Their deaths brought to 505 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the U.S.-led coalition launched the Iraq war March 20.
Also Thursday, the 23-year-old son of a former senior official from Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath party was slain in the southern city of Basra by an unidentified gunman, police said.
The attack on the women took place Wednesday in Fallujah, 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, when the nine women were being driven to work, said Khajiq Serkis, the driver who was shot in the leg.
He told The Associated Press from his hospital bed that he was part of a three-car convoy being chased by the four attackers in a Opel sedan, their faces covered by scarves. Serkis said his minibus lagged behind and the gunmen shot the tires before firing indiscriminately at the occupants.
Four women were killed and the other five were injured in addition to Serkis, said police Col. Sabbar Fadhel.
Most of the women were dozing when the shooting started, said a survivor, Vera Ibrahim, 39. She said the driver continued to speed until he too was hit.
All the victims, who were Armenian or Assyrian Christians, worked at a nearby U.S. military base in Habbaniyah. The women worked in the laundry and Serkis was employed as a mechanic and driver.
"Jews are more merciful than them," said Seita Noubar, 48, a sister of one of the victims, Sona Noubar, 50. "If they were real men, they would have attacked men ... not poor women."
Insurgents have attacked police and Iraqi officials who worked for the Americans. On Sunday a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle at a gate to coalition headquarters used by Iraqis who work there. Thirty-one people were killed.
Grieving relatives told the AP the victims didn't want to work for the Americans but were forced to because of poverty.
But unable to bear the fear of retribution, Askhik Varojan, 42, had decided to quit and was going to the air base Wednesday to collect her salary, said her sister, Eida Varojan.
Former Baath party members and other Saddam loyalists are believed behind most of the guerrilla attacks against the U.S.-led coalition forces, often setting off car bombs and roadside explosives that have killed hundreds of Iraqi men and women.
Fallujah and Baqouba, where the American soldiers were killed, are in the so-called Sunni Triangle stronghold of Saddam supporters.
U.S. forces have struggled to bring peace in the country while racing to meet its promise to end its occupation and hand over power to a transitional Iraqi government on July 1.
The plan calls for selecting a legislature through caucuses in Iraq's 18 provinces in May, which would later appoint a provisional government that will prepare for full elections in 2005.
Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, however, has opposed the caucuses, instead demanding elections.
Coalition officials maintain there is not enough time to hold legislative elections because of the unstable security situation and the absence of voter rolls and an election law.
The two sides, however, seemed to be showing flexibility after the United Nations (news - web sites) Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) said Monday he will consider sending a team to Iraq to see if elections were possible.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite political leader, said Wednesday al-Sistani appears willing to accept whatever decision the proposed United Nations team makes.
U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer has also offered to broaden participation in the caucus system to accommodate al-Sistani's demands but insists that the July 1 deadline for transferring sovereignty is final.
Britain, the staunchest ally of the United States, said Thursday accelerating the timetable for elections in Iraq would be "difficult."
"We are as keen as anyone for the democratic voice of the Iraqi people to be heard as soon as possible ... (but) holding elections before July would be difficult," said a spokesman of Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites).
Shiites, who form an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, were brutally suppressed during the days of Saddam when the minority Sunnis controlled power. They believe that only elections can guarantee them their right share of power and fear caucuses will give Sunnis and other minorities a disproportionate share of the government.
Meanwhile, in the southern city of Diwaniya, 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of Baghdad, Spanish Civil Guard commander Gonzalo Perez Garcia was shot in the head after a pre-dawn raid with Iraqi police at the home of a suspected terrorist leader Thursday, according to a Spanish Defense Ministry statement in Madrid.
He was taken to a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad in a serious condition.
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Associated Press correspondents Sabah Jerges and Nadia Abou El-Magd in Baghdad, Paul Garwood in Tikrit and Sameer N. Yacoub in Fallujah.
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