BAGHDAD, 17 July 2003 — Attackers fired a surface-to-air missile at a US military C-130 transport plane as it approached the Iraqi capital’s airport early yesterday but missed their target, a US spokesman said.
A grenade attack killed a US soldier yesterday, bringing the total combat deaths to 147, equaling the total in the 1991 Gulf War.
The latest death heaped pressure on US President George W. Bush, who is facing mounting criticism for the cost of the war and accusations the United States exaggerated intelligence on Iraq’s weapons to justify the conflict.
In further violence, the mayor of a town in a restive region west of Baghdad was shot dead along with his son, a US military spokeswoman said.
The Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera identified the mayor as Ali Mohammed Nayel Al-Jughaify and said he was shot as he was driving home from his office in Hadithah, about 200 km northwest of Baghdad.
“Residents accuse Jughaify of cooperating with the American forces,” it said, adding that unknown men had in the morning distributed leaflets asking residents not to cooperate with US troops.
The US spokeswoman could not say whether the mayor had been appointed by a US military commander, as is common in postwar Iraq. Other mayors have since been appointed by local councils under a process supervised by the Americans.
The commander of US ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and Interior Ministry adviser Bernard Kerik briefed the newly formed Iraqi governing council on the security situation in the country, a council spokesman said.
The US military had expected a surge of attacks this week to coincide with a string of anniversaries linked to Saddam Hussein, the Baath Party and Iraqi nationalism.
Nearly four hours after the first attack, a US military Humvee car was hit by a blast, possibly from a land mine, which wounded two soldiers in Baghdad, witnesses and the military said. Comrades of the soldier who died said he had only been in Iraq for two weeks on his first mission in the country.
“We heard an explosion and we ducked down in our trucks. The soldier who was killed was blown out of his truck. He is laying out there on the highway,” said one soldier, who declined to be identified.
He was in a military convoy of 40 trucks driving along the highway near Abu Ghraib, 25 km west of Baghdad, when there was an explosion. A US military spokesman in Baghdad said the convoy was ambushed with rocket-propelled grenades.
The surface-to-air missile was fired at the transport plane over Baghdad around 8.45 a.m. (0445 GMT) but the US military had no information on how close the missile had come to hitting the aircraft.
In Washington, a senior defense official at the Pentagon, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been small arms fire directed at aircraft “in the last couple of days or week” at Baghdad airport.
“The chance of success for small arms fire is pretty small. But all it takes is one lucky shot,” the official added.
The Pentagon said military expenses for the war and its aftermath have cost the United States $48 billion to date, with a monthly price tag over the next couple of months estimated at more than $3.9 billion.
But the human cost is becoming all too clear as US forces come under daily attack in Iraq. The attacks have continued despite a crackdown by US troops in areas north of the capital.
— Additional input from Agencies
