A suicide truck driver detonated a tonne of explosives near a police headquarters in Mosul on Friday, killing five US soldiers in the deadliest attack against US troops in more than a year.
The US military said Iraqi police were the bomber’s target and that the Americans were caught up as bystanders.
The horrific blast, believed to have been carried out by Sunni extremists, is likely to increase pressure on Iraq to ask US combat troops to stay in Mosul after the June 30 deadline for them to pull out of Iraqi cities.
The US’ top commander suggested in an interview this week that even as US troops pull out of other cities, he may have to send reinforcements to Mosul, northwest of Baghdad, and to volatile Diyala Province to the northeast.
Of the 31 US troops killed in combat in the Iraq War this year, more than one-third — 11 — have been in Mosul, an angry, impoverished city where efforts to obliterate al-Qaeda and other Sunni militants have failed over the years.
About 2,000 US troops and about 20,000 Iraqi army and police are stationed inside Mosul.
Besides the five Americans, two Iraqi policemen also died in the midmorning blast on Friday near the Iraqi National Police headquarters in the southwest of the city, a US statement said. At least 62 people, including one US soldier and 27 civilians, were wounded, US and Iraqi officials said.
A policeman who identified himself by his nickname, Abu Mohammed, said he saw the truck — its explosives hidden beneath grain — driving behind two US Humvees on the street leading to the police headquarters.
The Humvees entered the compound and stopped. Within seconds, the driver rammed through a metal barrier, slammed into a sandbagged wall near the Humvees and triggered the blast as Iraqi guards sprayed the vehicle with gunfire, he said.
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Stuart, chief of operations for northern Iraq, said the target was the police compound and the patrol just happened to be in the area.
Friday’s blast was the single deadliest attack on US troops in Iraq since March 10 last year, when a suicide bomber struck US soldiers on a foot patrol in Baghdad. Five Americans were killed.
More recently, four US soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter died on Feb. 9 in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint in Mosul.
The dead included a lieutenant colonel, one of only three battalion commanders killed in action in the six-year war.
Despite those losses, US casualties have fallen to their lowest levels of the war since thousands of Sunnis abandoned the insurgency and US and Iraqi forces routed Shiite militias in Baghdad and Basra last spring.
But that success has not been replicated in Mosul, where repeated operations have failed to subdue al-Qaeda and about a dozen other Sunni militant groups. Many insurgents are believed to have fled to northern Iraq after losing their sanctuaries in Baghdad and elsewhere.
The US-Iraqi security agreement that took effect this year requires US combat troops to leave bases in cities by the end of June. US President Barack Obama plans to remove all combat units by September next year and withdraw the rest of the US force by 2012.
But the top US commander, General Raymond Odierno, said this week that he worries Iraqi forces won’t be ready in June to assume full responsibility for Mosul.
Odierno told the Times of London in an interview published on Thursday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki faces a “very difficult” political decision on whether to ask US troops to stay longer in Mosul.
Mosul politicians themselves are divided over the issue. The majority Sunni Arabs generally oppose an extension, while minority Kurds and their allies support it.
A Sunni party won the provincial election in Mosul last January and is due to take office Sunday now that coalition talks are over.
Atheel al-Nujaifi, who is expected to become governor of the province around Mosul, opposes keeping the US troops.
“There is no reason for US forces to stay beyond June because well-organized and well-disciplined Iraqi security forces are capable of securing the province,” al-Nujaifi said on Friday. “We will work to ensure this when we take over the provincial council.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS