BAQUBA, Iraq, 4 December 2005 — Insurgents ambushed an Iraqi Army patrol north of Baghdad yesterday, killing 19 soldiers in a well-planned attack, a day after the Pentagon announced 10 US Marines were killed by a bomb west of the capital.
The Iraqi soldiers were traveling in a five-vehicle patrol near Baquba, 60 km from Baghdad, when they were hit by a roadside bomb. Immediately afterward, gunmen opened fire in what police described as a well-planned assault.
Police sources said 19 soldiers were killed and that they were all from southern Iraq where the population is largely Shiite, potentially adding a sectarian element to the attack.
The deaths come amid a rise in insurgent violence ahead of elections set for Dec. 15, and amid growing tensions between Iraq’s religious sects.
In a move that could aggravate those tensions, the country’s top Shiite cleric has urged Shiites to turn out and vote for religious candidates on election day.
The attack in Baquba, where there has been a surge in guerrilla activity over the past three weeks, followed the assault on the Marines near the former rebel city of Fallujah on Thursday, the deadliest attack on US troops for four months.
Al Jazeera broadcast a video yesterday by a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq which the Arabic television channel said showed an explosion against a US patrol near Fallujah. It was not clear whether the group claimed the attack which killed the 10 US Marines.
The brief video shows a Humvee, flanked by troops traveling slowly down a street when a huge explosion engulfed the vehicle and sent bystanders fleeing the scene.
Separately, four Western aid workers kidnapped a week ago appeared in a second militant video aired by Al-Jazeera. The four — two Canadians, a Briton and an American — face death unless all 12,000 prisoners in Iraq are released by Dec. 8.
Iraq’s largest Sunni party called for the release of the hostages, saying such kidnappings tarnish the image of Islam and will have negative effect on those who call for ending the US military presence.
Also yesterday, an influential group of Sunni clerics threatened to pull out of a tentative agreement reached in reconciliation talks in Cairo, saying continued violence against Sunnis was unacceptable.
“The association finds itself forced to reconsider the decisions reached at the Cairo conference,” Abdel Salam Al-Kubaisy, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, told a news conference. “What is happening on the ground differs completely from what was promised.”
