<<US should expect a whole lot of unconventional attacks for which its arsenal is impotent to to anything against.>>
Message 18579344
In the posting above, I was expecting some sea-going terrorism. It start happening.
Boat explosion in Basra kills 2 U.S. Navy sailors
At least 12 Iraqis die in mortar attack on Baghdad market
Saturday, April 24, 2004 Posted: 9:42 PM EDT (0142 GMT)
cnn.com
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. sailors died Saturday after a small boat they boarded off Basra, Iraq, exploded, a U.S. Navy spokeswoman said.
The two were part of a seven-member boarding team. Four others were wounded.
The explosion was the first of three at Iraq's main oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. The blasts occurred shortly before 6:20 p.m. (10:20 a.m. ET).
Twenty minutes after the blast flipped the small boat and tossed the sailors into the water, security officers intercepted two other boats as they approached the terminal.
Each exploded near moored ships, the Navy said. The coalition believes the boat attacks were coordinated
Earlier Saturday, a mortar attack killed at least 12 Iraqis in a crowded market in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. It was the first of the day's series of attacks that left at least 28 people dead, including five U.S. soldiers and the two sailors.
The market attack, which also wounded at least 25 people, prompted a mass demonstration in the streets of the largely Shiite neighborhood, a stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Video from the scene showed a mangled vehicle, surrounded by mobs of angry men shouting at the photographer. Other Iraqis collected body parts from pools of blood on the street. A dead horse lay on the curb beside a street vendor.
Elsewhere, five U.S. soldiers were killed and six others wounded Saturday morning in a rocket attack north of Baghdad, a senior coalition official told CNN.
In the Sunni stronghold of Tikrit, a roadside bomb detonated outside the 1st Infantry Division base, killing four Iraqis -- two police and two civilians -- and wounding 16 others, according to Master Sgt. Robert Powell.
Farther south in Karbala, coalition forces killed five attackers Saturday morning after they fired at the coalition base camp with mortars, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. There were no coalition casualties.
Bremer holds Fallujah talks
The top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, traveled to Fallujah on Saturday afternoon as part of the discussions to bring peace to the town, Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor said.
Marines and insurgents are observing a tenuous cease-fire, but Marines say they have occasionally come under fire from the fighters.
"There has been a tremendous amount of progress on the discussions," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. "It has been one-sided progress."
Kimmitt said Fallujans haven't been able to deliver on a number of steps and pointed to a chart that listed examples.
The failed steps include stopping violence; collecting and delivering significant heavy weapons; helping re-establish credible police presence and paving the way for routine patrols; generating positive statements from mosques supporting the peace steps; and initiating a probe into the killing March 31 of four U.S. security contractors.
In contrast, he said, the Marines have adhered to the cease-fire, even though they have had to return fire in self-defense.
Kimmitt said the coalition has OK'd access to humanitarian aid; adjusted the curfew; allowed families back, though that had to be stopped because of violence; established a civil defense checkpoint; allowed access to the general hospital; OK'd passage of official ambulances; allowed sheiks into the city as well as engineers who could fix water problems; and prepared to allow in fuel tankers.
Kimmitt said the coalition intends to pursue a "political track for a period of time" and will "try to settle this peacefully."
"Our patience is not limitless. Our patience is not eternal. Should there not be a good-faith effort demonstrated by belligerents inside Fallujah, the coalition is prepared to act," he said.
Counting the deaths reported Saturday, 714 U.S. troops have died in the Iraq war -- 516 from hostile fire, 198 in nonhostile incidents. Of those, 575 died after President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1 -- 405 in hostile fire, 170 in nonhostile incidents.
Other developments
The remains of a U.S. Army sergeant missing since April 9 have been identified, the Pentagon announced Saturday. Sgt. Elmer Krause, 40, of Greensboro, North Carolina, had been listed as missing since an attack on a fuel convoy west of Baghdad that also killed three American employees of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.
A U.S. Marine died Thursday, more than a week after receiving wounds in action in Iraq's vast Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, according to a Coalition Joint Task Force statement released Saturday.
On Friday, Bremer announced changes to the policy that the coalition calls "de-Baathification" -- the effort to lessen the influence of former loyalists to Saddam's Baath Party over the new Iraq. During his remarks, Bremer said de-Baathification is the "right" policy but has been "poorly implemented," particularly as it affects teachers and professors, who were forced to join and were party members in name only.
CNN's Jane Arraf, Jim Clancy, Arwa Damon, John King, Mike Mount and Kianne Sadeq contributed to this report. |
