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Five soldiers killed in iraqi base attack Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4928700§ion=newshttp://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4928700§ion=news
Five U.S. Soldiers Killed in Attack on Iraq Base
Sat Apr 24, 2004 08:43 AM ET
By Michael Battye
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A least 13 Iraqis were killed when rockets slammed into a Baghdad market on Saturday and insurgents killed five soldiers north of the city in the bloodiest month for U.S. troops since deposing Saddam Hussein.
An apparent suicide car bomb exploded in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit north of Baghdad, killing three Iraqi police and wounding 16 other people -- 12 of them police.
Officials said at least six other Iraqis were killed on Saturday in violence in Baghdad's Sadr City area and in Kerbala, south of the capital.
It was not clear who fired rockets into the chicken market in the Ourfalli neighborhood of Sadr City, powerbase of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, wanted by U.S.-led forces.
Abdul-Jabbar al-Zubeidi, director of nearby hospital, said several of 30 people wounded were in critical condition.
Reuters Television footage showed blood in the street, human remains, a dead donkey and vehicles and houses riddled with shrapnel.
"We were standing talking when two rockets landed," Bassam Abdul Rahim said. "The second hit a gas canister and the explosion was huge. There was blood and bodies everywhere."
One Iraqi was killed and three sisters badly burned earlier when U.S. troops opened fire in Sadr City, sparking a fire which gutted several cars and nearby homes, residents and doctors said.
North of Baghdad, guerrillas fired two rockets into a U.S. base near Taji, killing five soldiers and critically wounding three. Three others were in serious condition, a U.S. military spokesman said.
U.S. helicopter gunships destroyed the truck from which the rockets were launched, but there was no word of casualties among the insurgents.
The car bomb explosion near a Tikrit shopping center appeared to be a suicide attack, as the car was moving at the time, the U.S. military said. No U.S. troops were wounded.
Suicide car bombings killed 73 people in the southern city of Basra on Wednesday.
In the holy city of Kerbala south of Baghdad, Polish soldiers killed five Iraqi gunmen who opened fire at their patrol, the Polish-led multinational division said.
April's surge of violence has unnerved several U.S. allies in the country and Washington is trying to persuade others to keep troops there past their July deadline for withdrawal.
U.N. PLEA
Sadr, the firebrand Shi'ite cleric, threatened on Friday to unleash suicide bombers if U.S. forces attacked Najaf, the city where he is holed up which is home to the holiest Shi'ite shrines.
U.S. forces are poised just outside the city and have vowed to kill or capture Sadr and destroy his Mehdi Army militia, but have allowed time for talks to defuse the standoff.
U.S. Marines are poised to resume an offensive in the Sunni town of Falluja unless guerrillas turn over heavy weapons.
Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq who is trying to put together an interim Iraqi government to take over when the U.S.-led coalition hands over sovereignty on June 30, urged the U.S. forces to hold off.
"I think that there is always a better solution than shooting your way into anywhere," Brahimi said.
A few families who had fled fierce fighting in Falluja earlier this month walked back into the battle-scarred city on Saturday, hours after Iraq's U.S. administrator said "major hostilities could resume at short notice."
Paul Bremer said "armed bands" in Falluja must give up their weapons and "submit to national authority" if a shaky cease-fire negotiated with civic leaders were to last.
Brahimi said he wanted the U.S.-backed Governing Council dissolved on June 30 and the politicians who dominate it to be excluded from the caretaker government of technocrats he thinks should see Iraq through to elections in January 2005.
In an interview with U.S. TV network ABC to be broadcast on Sunday, Brahimi dismissed the idea of expanding the existing 25-member council.
"The fear is that, you know, as somebody put it, perhaps a bit too unkindly, they will clone themselves. And why do you want to have that?" said the former Algerian foreign minister.
President Bush acknowledged that "tough work" lay ahead, saying the "enemies of freedom" would kill anyone in their way to try to drive U.S. forces from Iraq.
"But the stakes are too high for us to leave," he said on Friday at a fund-raiser in Florida for his campaign to be re-elected in November.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Friday he hoped Norway, the Netherlands and El Salvador, who have almost 2,000 troops in Iraq between them, would stay longer than planned.
Norway rejected the appeal, saying its 180 troops would leave around the June 30 handover. Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic said this month they were pulling out.
Britain said it might send more troops to replace the Spanish, but several other nations are committed to staying only until the end-June transfer of sovereignty.
Few relish the prospect of getting mired deeper in a conflict far bloodier than any of them anticipated.
(Additional reporting by Fiona O'Brien and Mussab Kheiralla)
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