BAGHDAD, 9 July 2003 — Another purported audiotape from Saddam Hussein taunted US-led forces yesterday three months after the strongman’s ouster, as attacks continued against US soldiers and their local allies eager to rebuild the country. A tape attributed to the elusive Saddam, the second in less than a week, broadcast yesterday by a Lebanese television station, upped the ante for the Americans who last week placed a $25-million bounty on the ousted president’s head.
The voice on the tape, which could not immediately be verified, told “Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Shiites, Sunnis, Muslims and Christians” that “your principal mission is to throw out the invaders by uniting your ranks.” Saddam’s latest rallying cry for his loyalists bent on wrecking the US reconstruction efforts came as the CIA deemed authentic last Friday’s message from Saddam, who disappeared after invading coalition troops entered Baghdad on April 9.
Yesterday alone, seven US soldiers were wounded in three separate attacks, a military spokesman told AFP, including three in a rocket-propelled grenade strike in the northern city of Kirkuk.
In the first incident two US soldiers were slightly wounded when an explosion damaged their Humvee vehicle on the outskirts of Baghdad, a US military officer said. The second blast in Khan Dhari, some 30 km west of Baghdad, was set off by an anti-tank mine, a rare tactic in a land where the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) is the weapon of choice, soldiers said at the scene.
US forces were distributing water and propane gas in Khan Dhari when the anti-tank mine exploded under a Bradley fighting vehicle in an open field near the propane station. The ruined Bradley was left in a ditch, motor oil spewn about. The blast whipped up a dust cloud and rained mud on the convoy for several seconds. Panicked residents fled the scene with their just filled propane tanks. Soldiers barked out orders to clear the area, pointing their M-16s when English failed to make the point.
The Bradley’s driver, Spt. Justin Howard of Georgia, sustained back injuries and was taken away on a stretcher. “I feel very lucky. Scared, too,” he said.
In another attack, on the main highway from Baghdad to the international airport to the southwest, “an improvised explosive device was dropped from a bridge onto a convoy,” Cpl. Todd Pruden said. “Two soldiers were wounded. One returned to duty and the other is still receiving medical care,” he said.
In a third incident, a military vehicle struck a land mine in Baghdad. “Two soldiers were wounded and evacuated to a medical facility,” he said, adding that the vehicle had been completely destroyed. He did not specify what condition the soldiers were in.
The US reconstruction efforts, already stumbling from bombings of Iraq’s fuel pipelines and sabotage of its power supply, plus the killing of 29 of its soldiers by guerrilla fighters, were also facing the new threat of Saddam loyalists targeting pro-US Iraqis.
Unidentified assailants lobbed grenades late Sunday at a police station in northern Baghdad, injuring two Iraqi policemen, a US military intelligence officer told AFP. He said no US soldiers were wounded in the attack. At least two attackers threw three or more grenades and shot at the police station in the city’s Ash-Shab district, where US military police are training members of Iraq’s new police force.
“Two Iraqi police were wounded by shrapnel, one in the hand and one in the pelvis,” the US officer said. The attack follows a weekend bomb attack in Ramadi, around 100 kilometers west of Baghdad, in which seven Iraqi police recruits were killed and dozens of others wounded.
Residents in the town said there had been threats warning Iraqis not to cooperate with the US-led coalition prior to the bombing. With the wave of attacks on US troops and those working with them showing no sign of a let up, the coalition announced yesterday it would offer rewards starting at $2,500 for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.
In another move to boost security, the coalition said it was calling back all members of the Interior Ministry, but former intelligence officers were not invited to return. The US boss in Iraq, Paul Bremer, disbanded in late May the ministry, along with Saddam’s elaborate web of dreaded state security services.
A military officer in the southern city of Basra said a British soldier was also wounded on a joint patrol with Iraqi police officers at the weekend. A bullet struck the soldier in the leg as he and Iraqi police patrolled the northern edge of the city Friday, Lt. Cmdr. Clive Woodman said.
