| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Iraq | |
| Four Bombings Kill 13 in Iraq | |
| 2003-12-28 | |
| Suicide attackers carried out four coordinated car bombings Saturday outside the bases of U.S.-led forces in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing six soldiers from Bulgaria and Thailand as well as seven Iraqis. The afternoon attacks, which wounded more than 100 people, came in rapid succession, targeting a military logistics camp near a university, a base housing a Thai-run hospital and the city government center, where U.S. military police are posted. Five American soldiers were injured in the last strike. As the assailants drove explosives-laden vehicles toward the targets, other insurgents pounded the sites with mortar and machine-gun fire, according to Maj. Gen. Andrzej Tyszkiewicz, commander of the Polish-led multinational force responsible for the area. "It was a coordinated, massive attack planned for a big scale and intended to do much harm," he said. Tyszkiewicz called it the largest attack against foreign forces in his sector of south-central Iraq, which is patrolled by 9,500 coalition forces, including 2,400 from Poland. He said the death toll could have been significantly higher, but troops opened fire on the bombers as they rushed toward their targets, preventing the attackers from detonating their lethal loads inside the bases. Two of the dead were Thai soldiers guarding a military checkpoint who were killed when a car exploded outside the wall of their camp. Bulgaria's deputy defense minister, Ilko Dimitrov, confirmed that four troops from his country were killed and that nearly 500 others were being evacuated from their camp because the base had been destroyed. "We face an enemy which does not respect any values," he told reporters in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. In killing the Thais and Bulgarians, the attackers dealt the latest blow to foreign soldiers serving in the U.S-led occupation force. The most devastating such attack was a suicide bombing at the Italian military headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriyah on Nov. 12 that killed 19 Italians and 11 Iraqi bystanders. Among the fatalities Saturday were six Iraqi police officers, killed by the explosion at the city government complex, according to the mayor of Karbala, Akram Yassiri, who was slightly injured in the attack. The blast severely damaged the city hall, the police headquarters, the courthouse and offices of the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. The blast also carved a deep crater in the street and shattered glass for blocks. The street was littered with the charred remains of cars and pickup trucks.
| |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |