BAGHDAD, 15 November 2005 — Roadside bombs killed nearly a dozen people in Iraq yesterday, as US-led forces launched the latest phase of an offensive, killing 37 insurgents near the Syrian border, in a bid to secure the nation for December polls.
In the first roadside bomb attack, two South African private security contractors were killed by a roadside bomb near the heavily fortified “Green Zone” in central Baghdad, the US Embassy spokesman’s office said.
Three others, an American, an Iraqi, and another South African, were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously. Earlier Iraqi police had said three people were killed.
The contractors work for Dyncorp, a US-based firm that has a range of security operations in Iraq, including employing Westerners to protect convoys and reconstruction projects. In other violence, six civilians died when a similar roadside explosive device hit two passenger coaches in Ramadi, a violent city west of the Iraqi capital.
The blast near the Green Zone, which could be heard several kilometers away and sent a thick plume of black smoke into the air, was near a compound housing the Iranian Embassy, but there were no reports of injuries or damage to the mission.
Another three people were killed and four more were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in a busy commercial street in eastern Baghdad, police said.
Roadside bombs, usually used to target US and Iraqi patrols, are the biggest killer of US troops in Iraq, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all deaths. Further west in Anbar, US and Iraqi forces began the latest phase of their operations to quell insurgents and foreign fighters as they attempt to make Iraq secure for next month’s poll. Militants have threatened to disrupt the balloting.
After a series of airstrikes, US and Iraqi troops moved into the town of Ubaydi, on the banks of the Euphrates River, 20 kilometers from the border with Syria, as part of Operation Steel Curtain which began last week.
“Five targets were struck by coalition airstrikes resulting in an estimated 50 insurgents killed,” the US military said.
“The insurgents were engaging coalition forces with small arms fire at the time of the strikes,” it said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush’s key ally in Iraq, said yesterday Britain could well start pulling some of its 8,000 troops out next year, although he said that would have to depend on how the security situation developed.
