A rchive Date
[ 29-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/03/28/53108-ap.html
Suicide bomber kills 4 U.S. soldiers in Iraq
British report 5 casualties from suspected 'friendly fire'
Sat, March 29, 2003
(AP) - A suicide bomber in a taxi killed four American soldiers Saturday at a checkpoint in south-central Iraq, a U.S. officer said. The attack came as coalition forces battled to quell paramilitary harassment in order to prepare for an all-out push toward Baghdad.
It was the first suicide bombing against U.S. and British forces since the invasion of Iraq began.
Capt. Andrew Wallace said the victims were part of the Army's 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, manning a checkpoint on a highway north of Najaf. A taxi stopped close to the checkpoint and the driver waved for help. The car exploded as the soldiers approached, Wallace told Associated Press Television News.
At U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, officers confirmed the incident, but said they had no details.
In Baghdad, U.S. cruise missiles struck the Iraqi Information Ministry on Saturday, while mourners gathered at a marketplace where Iraqi officials said 58 civilians were killed by a coalition bomb. Kuwaiti authorities said Iraq fired a missile of its own that damaged a popular shopping mall in Kuwait City.
Ground combat continued in southern and central Iraq, notably around the cities of Karbala and Nasiriyah, while U.S. forces pressed ahead with air and missile strikes aimed at weakening Republican Guard positions defending Baghdad. The latest round of strikes included attacks by Apache helicopter gunships of the 101st Airborne Division.
Some U.S. combat units were slowing their advance while supply and communications support is beefed up, but coalition officials said there was no broad order to delay the push toward Baghdad.
"It is purely a case of shaping the battlefield, getting our troops equipped and in the right place for the next part of the campaign," said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a spokesman for coalition forces.
Thus far, according to coalition officials, the frequent attacks on supply lines by Iraqi paramilitary fighters have not derailed preparations for the expected all-out assault on Republican Guard divisions near Baghdad. But Lockwood acknowledged that the aggressive paramilitary activity had not been anticipated by U.S. and British war planners.
"What we've encountered is yes, something slightly different: paramilitary forces that weren't in the war-game profile," Lockwood said. "We have contingency plans... they have been brought into action to deal with these forces and have not at all deflected us from achieving our objectives and maintaining our timeline."
In Kuwait City, a missile exploded early Saturday on a pier near a multilevel seafront shopping centre, blasting out windows and causing two minor injuries. It was first missile to hit Kuwait City since U.S. troops based there invaded neighbouring Iraq on March 20.
Col. Youssef al-Mullah, a Kuwaiti military spokesman, told The Kuwait News Agency that the missile was manufactured in Iraq.
Iraqi authorities had no immediate comment on the Kuwaiti allegation, but said the explosion Friday evening at the Al-Nasr market in Baghdad was evidence that U.S. and British forces were targeting civilian areas.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said Saturday that U.S. President George W. Bush should be charged with war crimes in connection with the civilian deaths.
The U.S. Central Command said it was trying to determine what caused the explosion, but repeated its denials that Iraqi civilian neighbourhoods are targeted.
Overall, Iraq claims more than 4,000 civilians have been killed or wounded since the war began.
Early Saturday, another strong explosion shook the centre of Baghdad. U.S. officials said the Information Ministry was targeted before dawn by Tomahawk cruise missiles, but the building appeared intact at midmorning.
South of Baghdad, marines battled Iraqi fighters in and around the Euphrates River city of Nasiriyah. Cobra helicopters fired rockets into the city, which was shrouded in smoke from a burning power plant.
U.S. forces were trying to clear the strategic road around Nasiriyah, which lies at a junction of highways leading to Baghdad. Four marines with the 1st Expeditionary Force, which is engaged in the battle, were reported missing.
Eighty kilometres southwest of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes and artillery pounded the city of Karbala, concentrating on Iraqi forces moving south to confront U.S. troops. Iraqi forces sent armoured vehicles to probe U.S. defence overnight; U.S. officers reported destroying two of the vehicles.
The U.S. Central Command said American warplanes firing laser-guided missiles destroyed a two-storey building where some 200 Iraqi paramilitary fighters were believed to be meeting Friday in the besieged southern city of Basra.
U.S. officials said they did not know what happened to the building's occupants after the attack, which targeted units loyal to Saddam Hussein that British officials say have clamped down on restive civilians in Basra.
British forces surround the city -Iraq's second-largest, with a population of 1.3 million -and want to open the way for badly needed humanitarian aid. But they have yet to move in, wary of facing street-by-street resistance from the militiamen.
British officials said Saturday that a British soldier was missing and believed killed, and four others injured, after armoured vehicles came under attack in a possible "friendly fire" incident near Basra. The Defence Ministry said it was investigating reports that the soldiers -members of the Household Cavalry Regiment -were fired on by U.S. warplanes.
The death would bring to five the number of British servicemen killed by "friendly fire." Four have been killed in combat and 14 in accidents.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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