BAGHDAD, 14 December 2004 — A suicide car bomber killed 13 people in Baghdad yesterday, the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s capture, and clashes resumed in Fallujah, a one-time insurgent stronghold that American forces believed they had conquered. Seven Marines died in combat in western Iraq.
The violence underlines the difficulties US-led forces have encountered in the year since Saddam’s ouster in trying to end a rampant insurgency and bring the country under control. US military commanders acknowledge they initially underestimated the strength of the insurgent backlash and admit coalition-trained Iraqi security forces are not yet up to securing their own country.
The fighting in Anbar, a vast province including Fallujah and Ramadi, was the deadliest for US forces since eight Marines were killed by a car bomb outside Fallujah on Oct. 30. The deaths brought to nearly 1,300 the number of American troops killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
In Baghdad, a militant linked to Al-Qaeda in an explosives-laden car waiting in line to enter the western Harthiyah gate of the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the US Embassy and Iraq’s interim government, detonated the vehicle as he drove toward the checkpoint, Iraqi police said.
Dr. Mohammed Abdel Satar of Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital said 13 people were killed and at least 15 wounded in the suicide blast. The US military said there were no injuries among its troops.
Jordanian militant Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda in Iraq group claimed responsibility for the bombing in a statement posted on an Internet site regularly used by militants.
“On this blessed day a lion from the (group’s) Martyrs’ Brigade has gone out to strike at a gathering of apostates and Americans in the Green Zone,” the group said in a statement, the authenticity of which could not be immediately verified.
The international zone has been the scene of frequent insurgent attacks during the past 18 months, killing and wounding dozens of people in car bombings or mortar barrages.
In Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded and wrecked two US Humvees, the military said. Lt. Col. James Hutton said three US soldiers and an Iraqi civilian in the vicinity were wounded.
Jubilant Iraqi men were seen holding up pieces of the Humvees and dancing around their charred hulks and a large crater blown into the road by the bomb.
In Mishahda, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Baghdad, gunmen attacked an Iraqi National Guard patrol killing three soldiers and wounding thee others. The attackers fled, witnesses said.
Iraq’s interim President Ghazi Al-Yawer said in an interview broadcast yesterday that the US-led coalition was wrong to dismantle the Iraqi security forces after last year’s invasion. “Definitely dissolving the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior was a big mistake at that time,” Al-Yawer told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
It would have been more effective to screen out former regime loyalists than to rebuild from scratch, he added.
“As soon as we have efficient security forces that we can depend on we can see the beginning of the withdrawal of forces from our friends and partners and I think it doesn’t take years, it will take months,” he said. US forces retook Fallujah from insurgents in a bloody battle last month in which hundreds died, including at least 54 Americans. The city had fallen under the rule of radical clerics and their mujahedeen fighters after Marines lifted a three-week siege of the city in April.
After the latest campaign, US commanders claimed they had broken the back of the insurgency in the mainly Sunni areas of western Iraq and that Iraqi security forces would start being phased in to take over, but fighting in the region has continued.
— With input from agencies
