Coordinated attacks jolt Iraq

By Edmund Sanders
Los Angeles Times

NELVIN CEPEDA / SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE Marines rest briefly yesterday in Fallujah, Iraq, where they engaged in a six-hour battle with insurgents. The Marines re-entered the city and launched aerial assaults after being attacked at a checkpoint.

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The death toll in five cities climbed to 105 people, including three U.S. soldiers, according to U.S. and Iraqi authorities. An additional 321 people were wounded, most by a series of explosions in the northern city of Mosul.

Within a chaotic six-hour period, insurgents unleashed a combination of tactics, including ambushes, armed assaults, car bombs and an explosives-laden suitcase and armed assaults.

As the police chief in Baqouba mobilized his forces to repel the attacks, insurgents assaulted his home, burning it down.

The attacks marked one of the most complex strikes in Iraq since last November, when insurgents in Baghdad sent six suicide car bombs to five police stations and the headquarters of the International Red Cross. More than 30 people died.

The latest attacks confirmed fears that insurgents would launch a final violent push to disrupt the June 30 handover of sovereignty.

One senior Iraqi official said intelligence reports indicate terrorists have prepared up to 60 car bombs for the coming days. U.S. forces recently intercepted three bomb-laden vehicles in Baghdad, a military official said.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi moved quickly to try to soothe an increasingly jittery population. "The situation is calmer now and everything is under control," he said.

In Washington, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice suggested the wave of blasts was intended to weaken the resolve of nations seeking to help in Iraqi reconstruction.

"This is, I think, meant to be a challenge to the new Iraqi government," she said. "And we've said all along that we fully expected that there was likely to be an uptick in violence as they try to derail this transition."

In a statement published on a radical Islamic Web site, supporters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a fugitive leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which took place in Mosul, Baqouba, Fallujah, Ramadi and Baghdad.

Allawi and U.S. military officials questioned whether all the attacks were carried out by the same group, blaming the Mosul explosions on al-Zarqawi and the attacks in Baqouba on Saddam Hussein loyalists.

A senior military official said the attacks did not demonstrate a high level of sophistication.

"This level of coordination could have been done with a couple of telephone calls (saying), 'Let's all do it on Thursday,' " said the official, who warned that more attacks were likely. "This may only be the first of many days," he said.

Iraqis are bracing for more violence. Many have fled the country, crossing into Syria and Jordan.

Iraqi security forces prepared to close some borders. In Mosul, government officials imposed a curfew. In Baghdad, Iraqi employees of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority have been told to stay home between Monday and July 2.

	JOE RAEDLE / GETTY IMAGES An Iraqi Civil Defense Corps officer yesterday investigates the remains of a truck near a checkpoint in the Rasheed district of Baghdad. A man carrying a suitcase stuffed with explosives detonated the device near the vehicle, killing at least four Iraq police and wounding U.S. soldiers.

"There may be more car bombings in the next few days," warned Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. "The terrorists are determined to disrupt the transfer of sovereignty. The leaders of Iraq, and the people of Iraq, are equally determined to accept sovereignty."

The bloodshed began with a series of attacks in Baqouba, about 40 miles northeast of the capital. At 5:30 a.m., a U.S. patrol was ambushed with guns, bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Two soldiers with the 1st Infantry Division were killed and seven were wounded, said 1st Infantry spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien.

About the same time, masked insurgents attacked the Blue Dome government building, a police station and several Iraqi police patrols.

Up to 20 Iraqi police were killed by insurgents who grabbed weapons from the station and attempted to take refuge in the city's soccer stadium, witnesses and U.S. officials said. Many attackers wore headbands with the words, "Battalions of Monotheism and Holy War."

Throughout the city, plumes of smoke rose and explosions were heard as insurgents battled U.S. troops. Two U.S. tanks were badly damaged, witnesses said.

Insurgents handed out leaflets warning citizens not to cooperate with Americans. "The flesh of those working with the Americans is more delicious than American flesh itself," one read.

As the city's police chief, Wallid Azzawi, coordinated his forces, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at his home, razing it.

U.S. forces deployed military jets and helicopters, dropping bombs on insurgent positions near the soccer stadium and on other targets in Fallujah and Baqouba, officials and witnesses said. A Marine helicopter was forced down outside Fallujah, but the crew was not injured.

More than half the deaths occurred in Mosul, where four suicide car bombs at police facilities killed at least 62 — including one U.S. soldier whose name has not been released — and injured 220, officials said.

The Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade is now based in Mosul.

The violence began at 9:05 a.m. as three bombs exploded at a police academy, a police substation and a hospital, said Lt. Col Joe Piek, a Stryker Brigade public-affairs officer based in Mosul. The three explosions were followed about an hour later by a small-arms attack and a fourth explosion.

Later, Iraqi Security forces and U.S. forces battled insurgents trying to take over a police station in the southwest part of the city.

Early in the U.S.-led occupation, Mosul was considered to be a relatively stable city compared with Sunni areas farther south. But the security situation has deteriorated within the past year. The Stryker Brigade and related units totaling more than 5,000 soldiers arrived in Mosul in February.

In Fallujah, U.S. Marines briefly re-entered the city and launched aerial assaults after coming under attack at a checkpoint by a group of insurgents. Under a May cease-fire, Marines had agreed to remain outside the city, which was controlled by a special Fallujah Brigade.

A spokesman for the brigade told satellite-TV channel Al-Arabiya that fighting started when unidentified gunmen from outside the city provoked U.S. forces, who returned fire and hit some homes in the city. Residents fired back, prompting a renewed battle.

Fallujah Mayor Mahmoud Ibrahim said a delegation of local leaders quickly met with military leaders. "We agreed to stop the military operations and pull troops out of the city and to not attack resistance members," he said.

In Ramadi, three police stations and a government office were attacked. At the Qatana station, 14 insurgents swarmed the building, set explosives and fled, killing eight and wounding 15, U.S. officials said.

In Baghdad, a man carrying a suitcase filled with explosives approached an Iraqi checkpoint in the Rasheed district and detonated the device, killing at least four Iraqi police and wounding several U.S. soldiers.

Special Los Angeles Times correspondent Ashraf Khalil in Baghdad and correspondents in Fallujah, Mosul and Baqouba contributed to this report. Information on the Stryker Brigade is from Seattle Times staff writer Hal Bernton.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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