BAGHDAD, 22 January 2007 — Ten US soldiers were killed in two separate attacks in Iraq on Saturday, the US military said yesterday.
Five soldiers were killed in a gunbattle with militiamen wearing US and Iraqi military uniforms who stormed a security meeting in the southern city of Kerbala. And in the western Anbar province, five soldiers were killed in combat.
Militiamen armed with grenades and light weapons attacked a joint command center where Iraqi and US officials were meeting Saturday to discuss security for the Shiite ceremony of Ashura.
Kerbala Gov. Akeel Al-Khazaali said the attackers wore US and Iraqi military uniforms and carried valid identity cards which helped them breach security perimeters. “Those who carried out this operation were in GMC four-wheel drive vehicles and wore official Iraqi and US military uniforms,” Khazaali said in a statement. “They fought a battle with Americans posted in the operations room at the police headquarters.”
“The group used percussion bombs and broke into the building, killed five Americans and kidnapped two others, then fled to the area near Mussayib,” about 20 km to the north, the governor said, adding that Iraqi troops later found one of the SUVs with three dead bodies dressed in military uniforms.
The US military, which has said that five US soldiers were killed and three were wounded while repelling the attack, denied that two US soldiers were kidnapped.
“Nothing has changed since the night before,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said. “During the attack on our coalition forces, we sustained five US KIA and three US wounded. All of MND-Baghdad (multinational division) personnel were accounted for after the action.”
A security official in Kerbala, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information to the media, also said the gunmen who carried out the attack on the Provincial Joint Coordination Center were using SUVs similar to ones used by the US authorities. He said during their attack, the gunmen used stun grenades then left shortly afterward.
The official said the convoy of gunmen then drove into Babil province. The police commander in the province confirmed that they entered the region before disappearing.
Although Babil province is predominantly Shiite, some parts of it, just south of Baghdad, are Sunni and insurgents are known to be active there.
Of the five American casualties in Anbar, four were soldiers and one a Marine. Anbar, heartland of the Sunni insurgency against the US military and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, is the deadliest region in Iraq for US soldiers.
The deaths of the US troops, combined with a helicopter crash that killed 12 US soldiers, made Saturday the deadliest day for U.S. forces in two years. It was also the third-highest of any single day since the war began in March 2003, eclipsed only by 37 US deaths on Jan. 26, 2005, and 28 on the third day of the US invasion. US authorities also announced two American combat deaths from Friday.
The heavy toll comes at a critical time of rising congressional opposition to US President George W. Bush’s decision to dispatch 21,500 additional soldiers to the conflict to try to curb sectarian slaughter.
In the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi police detained three Iranians who were found without documentation. The three were seized Saturday after they were found without passports while riding with a Kurdish driver, Maj. Gen. Wathiq Al-Hamdani, the police commander for Nineveh province, said. He said they claimed they had authorization to travel in the adjacent Kurdish-controlled region but mistakenly entered Mosul.
