US President George W. Bush vowed Monday to stay the course in Iraq, after a series of bold attacks around the Iraqi capital killed 43 people and wounded more than 200 in the deadliest day for two months.
"The more progress we make on the ground ... the more desperate these killers become," Bush said.
Yesterday, four more US soldiers were wounded near the northern city of Mosul, according to the military, as US officials urged aid groups to keep working in Iraq after suicide bombers struck the Red Cross headquarters and three police stations in Baghdad.
One soldier was wounded when insurgents attacked his convoy in southeastern Mosul and three others were injured, one seriously, when their patrol was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the town of Tal Afar, just west of Mosul, the US command said.
The five Monday morning attacks which plunged the capital into terror and sparked worldwide condemnation were launched with two simultaneous blasts at the police stations in Al-Bayaa, also known as Al-Elam, and Al-Dora, south of Baghdad.
Within barely an hour, explosions also rocked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office, and three other police stations in the capital. Another car bomb attack was foiled.
At the White House, Bush said the escalating attacks were a reaction to US successes on the ground.
"It's in the national interest of the United States that a peaceful Iraq emerge, and we will stay the course in order to achieve this objective," Bush said as he gathered with his top advisers on Iraq.
But US military leaders appeared split on who was behind the attacks.
US Brigadier General Mark Hertling told reporters in Baghdad that the five suicide bombings bore all the hallmarks of foreign fighters.
"We have not seen attacks we could attribute to foreign fighters before. We have seen those today," the general said.
But later Major General Raymond Odierno, commander of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division, discounted that theory, saying foreign fighters accounted for only "a very, very small percentage" of the forces resisting the US-led occupation.
"What I found is Iraqis do not like people from other countries fooling in Iraqi business," he told reporters in Washington in a video-teleconference from his headquarters in Tikrit.
The bombings, which shrouded the Baghdad skyline in smoke, were an ominous start for the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan as the anti-US insurgents escalated their campaign from bleeding the coalition with ambushes to apparently executing mass terror.
A survey of nine hospitals earlier counted 42 dead from the blasts, including two children and 19 women, and 216 people wounded.
The death of the US soldier, announced by the military late Monday, raised the number of fatalities to 43. The military also reported six wounded, raising the number of injured to 222.
The attacks came a day after a barrage of rockets pounded a hotel in the coalition's heavily-guarded Baghdad complex, housing dozens of US military and civilian staff, as well as visiting US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
One US soldier was killed and 17 other people wounded in the attack.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called Monday's attack on the ICRC a crime against humanity.
"All terrorist acts, from whatever quarter and whatever their justification, are morally repugnant and indefensible," his spokesman Fred Eckhard said in a statement.
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