BAGHDAD, 25 April 2004 — Dozens of Iraqis and eight US soldiers were killed yesterday in a spate of explosions and violent clashes.
In a new tactic, Iraqi fighters for the first time launched two boat attacks on the country’s vital Basra offshore oil terminal. Iraq’s Southern Oil Company shut down the terminal.
One boat exploded alongside a ship tied up at the terminal, said British military spokesman Maj. Ian Clooey. A second boat was intercepted by a coalition ship as it approached an exclusion zone around the terminal and there was an explosion soon after it was boarded, he said. There was no immediate word on casualties or damage to the terminal.
The highest casualty toll in yesterday’s violence was from four explosions, reportedly caused by mortars, in Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City where 14 Iraqis were killed and 36 injured. It was not clear who fired the mortars.
“There was blood and bodies everywhere,” said Bassam Abdul Rahim. Angry residents of Sadr City — a powerbase of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr — held up bloodied human remains to television cameras and said US helicopters had fired at the market.
One woman was killed in a separate attack in the same area when a mortar bomb hit her home. Her daughter was wounded.
The US military said it had no information on the deaths in Sadr City.
Another 14 Iraqis were killed and 11 wounded when their bus was hit by a roadside bomb near Iskandariyah, 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad, hospital officials said.
One of the wounded, 40-year-old Ali Kamel, said the bus with 45 passengers aboard was hit while it was traveling south from Baghdad to Diwaniyah.
“The explosion occurred when we arrived near Iskandariyah on a section of the road which was guarded by US troops who had just come under an attack,” he said.
“The vehicle blew up on a bomb which was meant for the Americans and the explosion was so violent that the bus flipped over,” he added.
Four US soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on a US base in Taji, just north of Baghdad, a US military spokesman said. Six other soldiers were wounded.
US helicopter gunships destroyed the truck from which the rockets were launched, but there was no word of casualties among the fighters.
Another two US soldiers were killed and one was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack on a convoy near the southern city of Kut, police said.
The US military command in Baghdad said a US soldier died Friday when a bomb detonated under his vehicle in Samarra, 110 km north of Baghdad. A Marine, injured during fighting in Fallujah on April 14, had also died.
The latest casualties brought to 718 the American military death toll since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March last year, including 520 killed in action.
Scores of US troops have died in Fallujah, where a two-year-old boy was killed and six people were wounded yesterday when shelling and gunfire hit their house.
“We were in our house when three shells fell on the neighborhood, including one that hit the first floor and went through to the ground floor before exploding,” said Hanan Abdel Baki, 27, herself wounded.
“We came out of the rubble with my brother and his son, Mortada, who died of a shrapnel wound to the neck, and my two daughters.”
In another incident, four Iraqi policemen were killed when a booby-trapped car exploded near a US military base in the northern city of Tikrit. Twelve policemen and four civilians were wounded in the attack, according to police.
Five fighters who were preparing an ambush near Karbala were killed by a Polish patrol early in the day. Maj. Ralph Manos of the Polish contingent said the fighters were digging into positions and were armed with RPGs, machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles and appeared to be preparing to ambush coalition troops.
An Iraqi civilian was burned alive in his vehicle after it came under fire near a coalition base in Najaf. Falah Hassan Abed, 27, was found in his burning Datsun pickup truck near the coalition base located between Kufa and Najaf, according to Dr. Mohammed Abed Al-Kazem at Kufa’s Mid-Euphrates Hospital. The base is manned by Spanish troops under Polish command.
