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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (6137)	1/25/2004 11:25:26 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

6 G.I.'s Are Killed in a Wave of Violence By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr. and EDWARD WONG Published: January 25, 2004 AGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 24 — Insurgents in Iraq killed or wounded scores of people in several attacks on Saturday, including two American soldiers who were killed by a makeshift bomb on a road near Falluja and three more who died in a truck-bomb attack in Khaldiya, military officials said. On Sunday, a sixth American soldier was killed in the town of Bayji, about 70 miles north of Baghdad, after insurgents attack a military patrol at 10 p.m. on Saturday, said a spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division, which controls the area. The attacks hit a Bradley fighting vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade, critically wounding a soldier inside. The soldier died early Sunday morning. Bayji has the largest oil refinery in Iraq and lies inside the so-called Sunni triangle, where guerilla fighters continue to mount ambitious and deadly attacks against American-led forces. Another bomb went off near the city council building in Samarra, killing four Iraqi civilians and wounding 33 badly enough that they required treatment at the local hospital, the officials said. In that attack, which occurred just after American soldiers passed the spot in their vehicles, three soldiers were hurt. And in Mosul, four Iraqis in the local security forces were wounded in a spate of five drive-by shootings, one of which erupted into a brief firefight, the military said. In the Khaldiya attack, a four-wheel-drive vehicle rigged with explosives drove up to an American checkpoint at a bridge and detonated, The Associated Press reported, quoting a witness. In recent weeks, attacks on the American-led occupation forces have been running at about one and a half dozen a day, with others mounted daily against Iraqi security forces or against civilians, sometimes those working for the occupation army and sometimes bystanders. The latest deaths brought to 513 the number of American service members who have died since the United States and its allies launched the Iraq war on March 20, according to a tabulation by The Associated Press. The American military and the Iraqi forces it is training have been mounting many raids themselves, including 52 simultaneously in Baghdad alone on Friday night that resulted in the arrest of about 25 people, the military said. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, said that in those raids bomb-making materials, documents that he said were "associated with" the intelligence services of the ousted government, and weapons and ammunition were seized. American troops and local police officers also arrested a suspect in a previous attack on the Iskandariya police station, the American command said. The continuing guerrilla war is complicating efforts to hand over sovereign power to the Iraqis by June 30, starting with caucuses to select a transitional national assembly that would then write a constitution calling for general elections in 2005. Many Iraqis would prefer quicker general elections instead, but the lack of security is one of the obstacles to that approach. In a news conference Saturday, General Kimmitt said the goal of anti-American fighters who killed Iraqi civilians working for the occupying forces was to delay the advent of democracy. "They weren't attacked because they were working side by side with the coalition," he said, using the term preferred by the Americans for the occupation army that they lead. "They are being attacked because they are working for a free Iraq." Dan Senor, the spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition Provision Authority that runs Iraq under occupation, said at the same news conference that the United States was not considering any major changes to the plan for caucuses worked out between the occupation headquarters and the American-installed Iraqi Governing Council on Nov. 15. The only changes to be expected, he said, were "clarifications."