18 US Soldiers Killed in Mosul Attack

“More than 20 have been killed and more than 60 wounded,” Brigadier General Carter Ham, the US-led occupation commander for the Mosul area, told the British broadcaster.

“The killed include US military personnel, US contractors, foreign national contractors and Iraqi army,” he added. “It is indeed a very, very sad day.”

The Associated Press put the death toll at 24, including seven workers for US oil giant Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary.

An embedded reporter from the Richmond-Times Dispatch described the scene of the attack at the Mosul base as soldiers sat down for lunch and were suddenly hammered in a rocket attack.

“The force of the explosions knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and shrapnel sprayed into the men,” journalist Jeremy Redmon told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot. ‘Medic! Medic!. soldiers shouted,” he told AFP.

The attack was immediately claimed by Al-Qaeda linked Ansar Al-Sunna.

“One of the mujahedeen of the Army of Ansar Al-Sunna carried out a martyrdom operation in a restaurant of the occupation forces at the Ghazlani camp in Mosul,” the group said in a statement carried by AFP.

Mosul, 370 kilometers (250 miles) north of Baghdad, has been transformed into a battleground between resistance fighters and US occupation troops.

The city was the site of almost daily assassination attempts on suspected US collaborators before the city boiled over in violence last month.

The US military has been making incursions into the city, Iraq’s third largest city, since coordinated attacks by fighters and armed groups on police stations prompted most of the local police force to quit on November 11.

Around 80 bodies have been found in and around Mosul since the beginning of December, most of which authorities say belong to security forces executed by unknown people, according to an AFP count.
The attack was swiftly condemned by US President George W. Bush who said it was aimed at derailing the transition to democracy in Iraq.

“The president mourns the loss of life and prays for the families of those who were killed. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” AFP quoted White House spokesman Scott McClellan as saying.

“The terrorists and Saddam loyalists are desperately seeking to derail the transition to democracy and freedom in Iraq. The enemies of freedom understand the stakes involved.”

“They will be defeated and a free and peaceful Iraq will emerge. When it does, it will be a major blow to their ambitions and the ambitions of those who espouse hatred,” McClellan added.

Britain’s The Independent newspaper reported on Sunday, December 19, that the prevailing state of insecurity in Iraq would make the January 30 elections the “most secretive” in history.

“Iraqi television shows only the feet of election officials rather than their faces, because they are terrified of their identity being revealed. It will be a poll governed by fear,” the leading British daily commented.

The Iraqi voters will choose a 275-member assembly on January 30, which will write a permanent constitution.

If adopted in a referendum next year, the constitution would form the legal basis for another general elections to be held by December, 2005.

On Sunday, two car bombs killed at least 62 people in the two southern Shiite holy cities of An-Najaf and Karbala.