BAGHDAD, 15 October 2004 — Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s group yesterday penetrated Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and set off bombs, killing five people, including four Americans. Elsewhere four US soldiers were killed in attacks by insurgents.
Iraqi national security adviser Qassem Daoud said “initial information” indicated the attacks on the Green Zone were a “suicide operation.” If so, it would be the first time insurgents have successfully infiltrated and set off bombs in the heart of the US-Iraqi leadership of the country.
The four American contract workers killed were employees of the private US security firm DynCorp. Two State Department officials were injured, neither of them critically, along with another employee of the company, in a blast in a vendor’s alley near the US Embassy annex, a US officials said. And several Americans were injured and at least six Iraqis killed in a second blast in a cafe.
Security arrangements were put under immediate review but it is “much too early to start speculating” on whether they would be overhauled, department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
Boucher did not identify the firm that employed the contractors, but other US officials said it was DynCorp, which helps provide security primarily in areas where Americans work in the Iraqi capital.
Separately, four American soldiers died in multiple attacks in Baghdad and Ramadi. One US soldier was killed in central Baghdad when his patrol came under attack while another died when a roadside bomb exploded in the eastern part of the city, the US command said.
The patrol was hit by small arms fire at about 1:45 p.m., a statement said.
In the earlier bomb attack at 11:25 a.m., two other soldiers were wounded, a military statement said. The two injured were evacuated to a military medical facility.
In Ramadi, two soldiers were killed when their Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and caught fire, according to a US military spokesman at Camp Ramadi. Their convoy had been on a combat mission, searching the city for weapons caches. Ramadi is 113 km west of Baghdad.
Zarqawi, the man with a $25 million price on his head, claimed the Green Zone attacks in a statement on a website, saying both were carried out by suicide bombers. “Two lions from the ‘Martyrdom-seeking Brigade’, which is affiliated to the military wing of Tawhid wal Jihad group, managed to enter the US Embassy compound inside the Green Zone in the capital Baghdad,” said the statement.
Some 20 minutes later, the US military said planes had carried out airstrikes on a suspected weapons storage facility and safe house in Fallujah for operatives of Zarqawi. It was the first of three blistering strikes on the city as time appeared to running out ahead of a possible joint US and Iraqi military operation there to regain the city.
The city’s main hospital reported receiving five dead and 16 wounded.
Hours later, a delegation from Fallujah suspended peace talks with the government because of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s “impossible” demand to hand over Zarqawi, the city spokesman said. Allawi warned Wednesday that Fallujah must surrender Zarqawi and other foreign fighters or face military attack.
Abu Assad, spokesman for the religious council of Fallujah, said that “handing over Zarqawi” was an “impossible condition” since even the Americans were unable to catch him.
“Since we exhausted all peaceful solutions, the city is now ready to bear arms and defend its religion and honor and it’s not afraid of Allawi’s statements,” Assad said in a live interview with Al-Jazeera television.
However, he used the Arabic word for “suspend,” implying that the talks could resume later.
In other violence, an Al-Qaeda-linked group, Ansar Al-Sunna, posted a video on its website showing the beheading of a Turkish man it described as “a truck driver who ferries supplies to US forces” in Iraq and an investigative judge and a woman journalist working for a Kurdish television station were gunned down outside their homes in separate attacks.
— Additional input from agencies
