Update: Iraq Blast Kills 3 U.S. Troops, Wounds 9

02/25/2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded nine others north of Baghdad on Friday, the military said, while the government announced the capture of three figures associated with Iraq’s bloody insurgency.

In political developments, United Iraqi Alliance candidate Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has endorsed his nomination for prime minister.

The attack, which occurred around midday in Tarmiyah, about 20 miles north of the capital, raised the U.S. military death toll in Iraq to at least 1,489, according to an Associated Press count since the war began in March 2003. The military said three U.S. soldiers were killed Thursday in separate attacks.

“There was a group of American soldiers walking in the road while around five Humvees were parking behind them,” said Waleed Nahed, 35, who lives in the area. “I heard a very loud explosion and I saw bodies flying.”

Residents saw about a dozen injured U.S. soldiers lying on blood-splattered ground.

Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a spokesman for the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said the patrol was hit by an improvised explosive device - the term commonly used to describe a roadside bomb. Three soldiers were killed and nine were wounded, Kent said.

The road was immediately blocked off by the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces, and helicopters took the injured away, according to Nahed and Alaa Nagy, who works at a nearby factory. Both said they heard gunfire after the incident.

Attacks Thursday left 30 people dead, including the three Americans killed in separate incidents.

In Baghdad, the government said one of the three men arrested was Talib Mikhlif Arsan Walman al-Dulaymi, also known as Abu Qutaybah, a key aide to Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.


Al-Zarqawi leads an insurgency affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

Abu Qutaybah, who was captured during a Feb. 20 raid in Anah, about 160 miles northwest of Baghdad, “was responsible for determining who, when and how terrorist network leaders would meet with al-Zarqawi,” the government said.

He “filled the role of key lieutenant for the Zarqawi network, arranging safe houses and transportation as well as passing packages and funds to al-Zarqawi,” the government said. “His extensive contacts and operational ability throughout western Iraq made him a critical figure in the Zarqawi network.”

Al-Zarqawi has a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head and is believed to have orchestrated a wave of car bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and beheadings across the country.

During the same raid, Iraqi forces also captured another al-Zarqawi aide who “occasionally acted as his driver,” the government said. The man was identified as Ahmad Khalid Marad Ismail al-Rawi, who also helped arrange meetings for al-Zarqawi.


Their names belong to well-known Sunni tribes in and around the town of Ramadi, a hotbed of the insurgency in Anbar province west of Baghdad.

The government also said it apprehended the leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated cell allegedly responsible for carrying out a string of beheadings.

Mohamed Najam Ibrahim was arrested in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, the government said Thursday, but it gave no date for the arrest.

Officials said Ibrahim’s operation was linked to al-Zarqawi.

Ibrahim carried out beheadings with his brother, the government said, adding that he was being interrogated by authorities.

The endorsement of al-Jaafari came after members of the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance openly questioned its decision Tuesday to nominate the 58-year-old leader of the conservative Islamic Dawa Party as its candidate for prime minister following the nation’s landmark Jan. 30 elections.

“Ayatollah al-Sistani blessed the decision taken by the alliance about the prime minister post. He respects and supports what the alliance have decided,” al-Jaafari said after meeting with al-Sistani for more than two hours in the southern Shiite holy city of Najaf.

Politicians are negotiating behind the scenes to forge the alliances needed to win enough backing in the 275-seat National Assembly for the post of prime minister.

Politicians of all stripes sought out representatives of Iraq’s Sunni minority, whose support they need to isolate the insurgency. Many insurgents are believed to be loyalists of Saddam’s outlawed Sunni-dominated Baath Party.

The United Iraqi Alliance claimed Thursday it won the support of eight members of three tiny parties, boosting its parliamentary strength to 148 seats.

Alliance member Salama Khafaji said the groups were the Iraqi Turkoman Front, the National Independent Elites and the Islamic Labor Movement in Iraq.

But a splinter group believed to represent about 30 seats in the alliance, and which once supported one-time Bush administration favorite Ahmad Chalabi, renewed threats to withdraw its support. Although they issued no demands, it was unclear what Chalabi - who withdrew from the race - had promised them for their support.

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the secular Shiite who has about 40 seats, tried to take advantage of the rift by trying to open talks with the Shiite splinter group just one day after announcing he would form a broad coalition to try to keep his post.

To make any headway, Allawi must also win support from a Kurdish coalition controlling 75 of the assembly’s 275 seats.

The Kurds have indicated they will support al-Jaafari and the alliance if they meet key demands, including giving the presidency to one of their leaders - Jalal Talabani.

Violence on Thursday in Iraq left 30 people dead, including three American soldiers.

A suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew up his car during a shift change at police headquarters in Tikrit, killing at least 15 people in Saddam Hussein’s hometown in the bloodiest of the attacks.

In Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital, a suicide bomber killed five people when he blew himself up in front of the local headquarters of a key Shiite alliance member, the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The U.S. command said two American soldiers were killed and two wounded in separate bombings, one northeast of Baghdad in Qaryat, and a second near Samarra, west of Qaryat. The military said a third soldier was killed in action west of Baghdad, in Anbar province.

Also Friday, a Polish armored vehicle crashed into an Iraqi bus, killing a Polish soldier and injuring four other troops near Diwaniyah, about 100 miles southeast of the capital, the U.S.-led military coalition said. There was no word on whether there were any Iraqi casualties in the crash.