I wonder how much the violence will escalate, and how long the Shiites can practice restraint. It will be interesting to see if they can wait until after the elections to retaliate. Will all hell break out afterwards?
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Militant Group Says It Was Responsible; Over 60 Wounded
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: December 21, 2004
AGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 21 - An attack at an American military base in Mosul today killed more than 20 people and wounded more than 60, among them American and Iraqi soldiers and American and foreign contractors, the military said today.
Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who briefed reporters from Mosul, gave no further details of the toll in terms of numbers of dead or wounded or their nationalities.
"It's a sad day in Mosul," General Ham said, "but as they always do, soldiers will come back from that and they will do what they can do best to honor those who have fallen today and that is to see this very important mission through to a successful conclusion."
Earlier, a short announcement from the military said the explosion, at a military dining hall, occurred at noon Iraqi time near the city of Mosul. Photographs by Dean Hoffmeyer of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, broadcast on television and posted on the newspaper's Web site, showed scenes of mayhem and chaos as the casualties were being evacuated from what appeared to be a large military tent.
The militant group Ansar al-Sunna took responsibility for today's attack.
Mosul has been the scene of frequent raids by insurgents on police stations in the past six weeks.
Those attacks are part of a campaign to terrorize and intimidate Iraqis working either for the Iraqi security services or for American forces.
More than 100 bodies have turned up in the city in recent weeks, as the country heads toward elections planned for Jan. 30, which the militants oppose.
On Sunday car bombers struck crowds in Najaf and Karbala, killing at least 61 people and wounding about 120 in those two holy Shiite cities. In Baghdad, about 30 insurgents hurling grenades and firing machine guns pulled three election officials from their car in the midst of morning traffic and killed them with shots to the head.
Today's explosion came on the same day as a surprise visit to Baghdad by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who vowed that the war against the insurgents would be won and the elections held on time. Britain has some 8,000 troops in Iraq, mainly in the south of the country, centered on the city of Basra.
Mr. Blair's visit symbolized the dangers posed by insurgents trying to disrupt plans for the January polls.
The prime minister flew into the capital on a military aircraft and then, avoiding the roads that have been frequent targets in bombings and ambushes, boarded a helicopter that took him to central Baghdad, escorted by American Apache attack helicopters.
He held a news conference in the so-called International Zone, a fortified, heavily guarded walled compound for Iraqi government officials and foreign forces. The brief visit to the capital was not announced for security reasons.
Mr. Blair used his visit, his first to Baghdad since Saddam Hussein was toppled in spring 2003, to symbolize Britain's support for the national elections.
"Security is really heavy," Mr. Blair said, standing at a lectern during the news conference with the Iraqi interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, at his side. "You can feel the sense of danger that people live in here."
Mr. Blair met Iraqi elections workers, whom he called heroes.
The prime minister pointed out that Iraq's election workers must go to and from their homes and commission headquarters in the city as they carry out planning for an election process that has been disrupted by bloodshed.
Insurgents have been trying to disrupt or prevent the scheduled vote and the campaigning process by an Iraqi government that they see as collaborating with occupying foreign forces. The attacks on the Iraqi police and national guard officers have complicated plans to train enough local forces that would ideally spearhead security at polling stations.
Some Iraqi leaders have called for a postponement of the elections, saying that the continuing violence has made holding them untenable, especially in the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad. Millions of voters would have to brave the threat of attacks by guerrillas to go to polling stations.
With the elections only six weeks away and just days into the campaigning, concern has been growing over whether the Iraqi security forces will be able to perform well enough to allow voting to proceed.
On Monday, President Bush acknowledged that the United States had achieved only "mixed" success in training Iraqi troops to secure the country, and said that it was "unacceptable" that some Iraqi units had fled as soon as they faced hostile fire.
Dr. Allawi reiterated today that the elections would go ahead on time.
Mr. Blair described the violence in Iraq as a "battle between democracy and terror" that could continue even after the poll is held.
"There will be a concerted attempt to try and break our will over the elections," he said. "And I think that everyone understands that obviously there will be violence that will continue even after an election."
Planning for the vote is gaining pace. Election commission officials said that security was being reviewed for election workers, who number about 7,000, and on Monday officials also determined the order in which 275 political alliances, parties and individuals would be listed on election ballots.
Shiite Muslims, who represent about 60 percent of Iraq's population, have long been dominated by the Sunni minority, and they see the elections as an opportunity to turn their majority status into political power for the first time.
In other violence today, the American military said in a statement quoted by The Associated Press that its aircraft struck an "enemy position" in a city west of Baghdad. A local doctor, Nazzar al-Kubaisi, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying that six people were killed and 10 were wounded. |
