U.S. issues report on Iraqi roadside bombs
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-01 19:21

A day after releasing new casualty figures showing that October was the fourth deadliest month for U.S. forces in the Iraq war, the military issued a report Tuesday showing how hard it can be to prevent the deadliest form of attack: roadside bombs.

People look at burned cars, after a powerful roadside bomb exploded on Monday among civilians in Basra, Iraq, Tuesday, Nov.1, 2005. On Tuesday, police raised the casualty figures to 20 dead and 71 wounded by the explosion, which occurred along a bustling street packed with shops and restaurants as people were enjoying an evening out after the daily Ramadan fast. [AP]

The report, summarizing combat operations in and around Baghdad over a five-day period, said U.S. forces had found several powerful roadside bombs hidden in two vehicles on Saturday.

The day before, soldiers caught three suspected insurgents planting a bomb along a street and defused it before it could be used in an attack. On Thursday, a roadside bomb exploded, damaging a U.S. patrol, and when its soldiers chased three Iraqi men into a nearby home, they found it contained more bomb-making materials, the military said.

On Monday, the U.S. command reported that seven American service members were killed, six on Monday and one on Sunday. All of them were victims of increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs that have become the deadliest weapon in the insurgents' arsenal.

The new deaths made October the fourth deadliest month for troops here since the war began. A powerful roadside bomb also exploded on Monday among civilians in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and the major metropolis of the Shiite-dominated south, which has witnessed less violence than Sunni areas.

On Tuesday, Basra police raised the casualty figures to 20 dead and 71 wounded. The attack occurred along a bustling street packed with shops and restaurants as people were enjoying an evening out after the daily Ramadan fast.

In new attacks on Tuesday, two roadside bombs exploded, one in Baghdad and one south of the capital, killing a police officer and wounding three Iraqis, officials said.

On a road near Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide attacker with explosives hidden beneath his clothes lunged at a police patrol that had been slowed by traffic, wounding the city's police commander, Col. Khatab Rash, and his driver, police said.

Military commanders have warned that Sunni insurgents will step up their attacks in the run-up to the Dec. 15 election, when Iraqis will choose their first full-term parliament since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

To guard against such attacks, the military has raised the number of American troops in Iraq to 157,000 — among the highest levels of the Iraq conflict.

Most of the combat deaths and injuries in recent months have been a result of the increasing use by insurgents of sophisticated homemade bombs. The military refers to those bombs as "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs.

Last Friday, an IED killed Col. William W. Wood, 44, of Panama City, Fla. an infantry battalion commander. He was promoted posthumously, making him the highest-ranking soldier killed in action in the Iraq conflict, according to the Pentagon.

"We see an adversary that continues to develop some sophistication on very deadly and increasingly precise stand-off type weapons — IEDs, in particular," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters Monday.

The insurgents continually search for new and more effective ways to use IEDs, Di Rita said, while U.S. forces look for new ways to counter the threat.

"We're getting more intelligence that's allowing us to stop more of these things, find more of them. So we're learning from them and the enemy is learning from us, and it's going to be that way for as long as there is an insurgency," he said.

Monday's deadliest attack against U.S. service members came in an area known as the "triangle of death." Four soldiers from the U.S. Army's Task Force Baghdad died when their patrol struck a roadside bomb in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.

Two other soldiers from the Army's 29th Brigade Combat Team were also killed in a bombing Monday near Balad, 50 miles north of the capital. The U.S. military also reported that a Marine died the day before in a roadside bombing near Amiriyah, an insurgent hotspot 25 miles west of Baghdad.

The U.S. military death toll for October is now at least 92, the highest monthly total since January, when 106 American service members died — more than 30 of them in a helicopter crash that was ruled an accident. Only during two other months since the war began has the U.S. military seen a higher toll: in November 2004, when 137 Americans died, and in April 2004, when 135 died. The latest deaths brought to 2,025 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003. The number includes five military civilians.

The ongoing violence has killed a far greater number of Iraqis.