BAGHDAD, 23 December 2004 — The US military deployed armored vehicles in Mosul and infantrymen swept through the northern city yesterday, a day after an insurgent strike on a nearby base killed 22 people and injured 72 in one of the deadliest attacks on American troops since the war began.
The military was investigating whether a bomb was planted at the mess tent in Forward Operating Base Marez, where the blast sprayed shrapnel as US soldiers sat down to lunch Tuesday. Initial reports said a 122 mm rocket ripped through the tent’s ceiling.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, told CNN that a planted bomb was “a possibility.”
A radical Sunni group, the Ansar Al-Sunnah Army, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said it was a “martyrdom operation” — a reference to a suicide bomber.
Metz told CNN that experts had flown from Baghdad to Mosul to “do a very detailed explosive forensics investigation and they will be able to tell us the type of weapon (and) the size of weapon” that was used.
He also said the military was looking at better ways of protecting dining areas, gyms and other places where troops gather in large numbers on bases. Mortar attacks on US bases, particularly on the huge white tents that serve as dining halls, have been frequent in Iraq for more than a year. Bill Nemitz, a columnist with the Portland (Maine) Press Herald who was embedded with the troops in Mosul, told CNN that he heard “a lot of discussion” among troops about the vulnerability of the tent.
Mosul’s streets were deserted yesterday as hundreds of troops spread out across several neighborhoods backed up by Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees. An Associated Press reporter in Mosul saw helicopter gunships clattering overhead and jets flying high above the city, located 225 miles north of Baghdad.
Metz told CNN that in previous attacks on Marez were “rather random.”
“The enemy cannot stay in one place long to attack us, therefore his accuracy is pretty poor,” Metz said.
Early yesterday, US troops blocked Mosul’s five bridges over the Tigris River that link the western and eastern sectors of the city. The AP reporter saw US soldiers conducting sweeps through the eastern neighborhoods of Muthanna, Wahda and Hadabaa.
In a sign of the of the simmering tensions, most schools in the city were closed and few cars and people could be seen on the streets, although a formal curfew was not declared. Even traffic policemen were not at major intersections as usual.
The dead included 18 Americans — 14 service members and four US civilian contractors — and four Iraqis, the US military command in Baghdad said yesterday. Of the 72 wounded, 51 are US military personnel and the remainder are American civilians, Iraqi troops, and other foreigners.
Defense contractor Halliburton Co. said four of its employees and three subcontractors were killed, but it did not provide names or nationalities, and the US military did not provide a further breakdown of the identities of the dead.
At the military hospital near Mosul airfield, doctors and orderlies treated dozens of soldiers for burns, shrapnel wounds and damage to their eyes.
“This is the worst we have seen in the 11 months since we have been here,” said Master Sgt. David Scott, chief ward master for the hospital.
Sgt. Kyle Wright of Richlands, Virginia, recovering from wounds to his leg and back, said he was in the tent about to take a bite of chocolate cake when he was blown into the air. “When I came to, I looked up and saw open sky,” said Wright, a member of the 276th Engineer Battalion.
It was the latest in a week of deadly strikes across Iraq that highlighted the growing power of the insurgents in the run-up to the Jan. 30 national elections.
“We are not going to be intimidated. We will help the Iraqi people and their security forces not to be intimidated and we are pushing on toward the elections in January,” Metz said.
Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime last year. But rebel attacks in the largely Sunni area have increased dramatically in the past year — particularly since the US-led military offensive in November to retake Fallujah from the militants.
There was little apparent sympathy for the dead Americans on Mosul streets yesterday.
“In fact, what has happened in Mosul yesterday is something expected,” said Sattar Jabbar. “When occupiers come to any country (they) find resistance. And this is within Iraqi resistance.”
“I prefer that American troops leave the country and go out of cities so that Iraq will be safer and we run its affairs,” Jamal Mahmoud, a trade union official. “I wish that 2,000 US soldiers were killed, not 20.”
