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Insurgents bomb busy market in baghdad { May 12 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/05/12/insurgents_attacks_kill_2_marines_in_iraq/http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/05/12/insurgents_attacks_kill_2_marines_in_iraq/
Insurgents bomb busy market in Baghdad
By Thomas Wagner, Associated Press Writer | May 12, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq --Militants assassinated a general and a colonel who were en route to work Thursday, and a car bomb exploded near a busy market and movie theater in eastern Baghdad, part of a wave of attacks that killed at least 24 people, including three U.S. soldiers, and wounded more than 70, authorities said.
The violence comes despite a major U.S. offensive aimed at followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, in a remote desert region near the Syrian border said to be a staging ground for some of the deadliest attacks.
Two U.S. Marines were killed and 14 wounded when an explosive device hit their troop transport vehicle during the offensive Wednesday. At least five Marines and as many as 100 insurgents have been killed in all in Operation Matador, which entered its fifth day Thursday.
Elsewhere, three American soldiers were killed and one was injured in separate roadside bombings.
Insurgent violence killed more than 400 people in two weeks, including at least 69 people on Wednesday, underscoring the intensity of the fight for Iraq's future in the three months since the country's first democratic elections -- and more than two years since the United States declared the end of major combat.
Insurgents detonated four car bombs in Baghdad, including at least two suicide attacks, on Thursday, said Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, a U.S. military spokesman
In the bloodiest, a parked car blew up in eastern Baghdad and set fire to shops and cars and damaged a nearby apartment, said police 1st Lt. Mazin Saeed. The bomb killed at least 17 people and wounded 65, with women and children among the injured, said police Lt. Col. Ahmed Aboud.
An enraged crowd turned its anger on police and journalists, beating at least two Iraqi photographers. Police and U.S. troops fired in the air to disperse the crowd, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
A bomb exploded near a vehicle east of Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, killing a U.S. soldier assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, II Marine Expeditionary Force, the military said.
A soldier with Task Force Liberty was killed Thursday and another injured by a roadside bomb that exploded near their patrol in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
In the capital, a Task Force Baghdad soldier also died when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle, the military said.
At least 1,611 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
A suicide car bomber targeted an American convoy on a highway in western Baghdad, injuring two civilians, said police 1st Lt. Majid Zaki. No American casualties were reported.
Elsewhere in the capital, suspected insurgents shot and killed Brig. Gen. Iyad Imad Mahdi as he drove to work at the Ministry of Defense, and Col. Fadhil Mohammed Mobarak was shot and killed as he traveled to the Interior Ministry, where he led its police control room, police said.
Two more car bombs exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police said. One blast went off near a police station in a central residential area, killing two people and wounding two, said police Capt. Sarhad Talabani.
The other exploded at a site where explosives experts were dismantling a roadside bomb that residents had found, said police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader. Two of the experts were wounded by the blast, which also destroyed nearby vehicles, Qader said.
During the fifth day of Operation Matador, hundreds of American troops in tanks and light armored vehicles continued to roll through desert outposts to root out militants. Residents in the villages of Karabilah and Saadah reported heavy bombardments by U.S. artillery or warplanes Thursday following what they believed was fighting in the area.
On Wednesday night, a U.S. Assault Amphibian Vehicle struck an explosive device outside the town of Husaybah, killing two Marines and wounding 14, American military spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said Thursday.
Earlier in the offensive, which began late Saturday night, at least three Marines were reported killed and 20 wounded. It is one of the biggest U.S. military operations in Iraq since Fallujah was taken from militants six months ago.
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marines killed in all. However, The Washington Post, which has a journalist embedded with the offensive, put the figure at seven in a Thursday report.
Six of the dead came from a single squad, which also had 15 wounded, according to the Post.
The journalist, reporting from the town of Haban near the Syrian border, identified the squad as one of three that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment.
"They used to call it Lucky Lima," the Post quoted U.S. Maj. Steve Lawson, the commander of the company, as saying of the badly hit squad. "That turned around and bit us."
As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the offensive when U.S. forces clashed with well-organized and well-equipped fighters in Obeidi, 200 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
Operation Matador was launched after U.S. intelligence showed insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert after losses in the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Pool said Wednesday that the region is used as staging area for foreign fighters who cross into Iraq from Syria along ancient smuggling routes known as "rat lines."
"It is here that these foreign fighters receive the weapons and equipment to conduct attacks, such as suicide car bombs and assassination or kidnapping of political or civilian targets," Pool said in a statement.
The presence of foreign fighters has been confirmed by detainees captured during the operation, he said.
In another report from an embedded journalist, the Los Angeles Times reported that some U.S. commanders believe the area contains insurgent training camps and high-ranking members of the Iraq arm of the al-Qaida terrorist network, including al-Zarqawi, but that as of early Tuesday, no camps or al-Qaida in Iraq leaders had been found.
In northern Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers killed four insurgents, wounded two others and detained 97 suspects in raids in Mosul and near Qayyarah, the U.S. military said.
There has been no word on the fate of Douglas Wood, an Australian engineer who was taken hostage. Australia's top Islamic leader, Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly, has traveled to Baghdad to try to win the release of the 63-year-old resident of Alamo, Calif.
Al-Hilaly suggested Thursday that Wood's captors may have extended their Monday deadline for Australia to withdraw its troops from Iraq. He told Associated Press Television News that he was ready to negotiate with any party.
On Wednesday, a security firm said a witness reported that a Japanese worker taken hostage may have suffered fatal wounds. The international security company Hart said in a statement on its Web site that it has not given up hope that Akihito Saito, 44, may be alive.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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