The Hindu : International : U.S. toll 18; curfew clamped in Mosul

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Thursday, Dec 23, 2004

International

International

U.S. toll 18; curfew clamped in Mosul

By Atul Aneja

U.S. soldiers tend to the wounded after the rocket attack on the dining facility in Mosul, Iraq, on Tuesday. — AP

MANAMA, DEC. 22. American occupation forces have imposed a curfew in the restive Iraqi city of Mosul, following a deadly attack on a U.S. military base in which 22 people including 18 Americans were killed and 72 others injured.

Fifty-one of the wounded are Americans. CNN reported that around 35 of the critically injured, during the strike at the Merez forward base, have been shifted to an American medical facility in Germany.

A U.S. military statement said that among the killed Americans, 14 were uniformed personnel, while the remaining four were "security contractors." While American officials were earlier saying that the heavy casualties had resulted from the explosion of a rocket, which landed during lunchtime inside a crowded dining hall of the base on Tuesday, the possibility of a suicide bomb attack is no longer being ruled out.

"We are still investigating what caused the explosion," Capt. Dorren Luke, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said today.

An Islamic militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said it had carried out a "martyrdom operation," using the terminology to describe suicide attacks. The group, in a statement, said that two American helicopters had taken away the dead and the injured from the blast site. It added that that it had videotaped its operation, suggesting that the strike was meticulously planned, with the possible help of `insiders.'

Simmering tensions

A day after the attack, U.S. authorities have ordered an investigation into the incident which caused the maximum casualties in a single strike-comparable only to the November 2003 event, when 17 American soldiers were killed and five injured after two military helicopters collided over Mosul.

A curfew has now been imposed over Mosul. Residents said that they saw American tanks blocking all the five bridges leading into the city.

American planes flew overhead, while ground troops scanned the eastern districts of Muthanna, Wahda and Hadabaa. Amid simmering tensions, most schools in the city were closed and few cars and people could be seen on the streets. "We are conducting offensive operations to target specific objectives," Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, a spokesman for U.S. forces in the area, said. Witnesses said U.S. forces, backed by Iraqi National Guards, sealed off neighbourhoods in western and south-eastern Mosul and raided homes. "They're looking in the areas that are known hotspots," one resident in the west of the city said.

Analysts point out that Mosul might emerge as a major resistance hub as many of the guerilla leaders have converged inside the city, in the wake of the American invasion of Falluja on November 8.

Red Cross returns

Meanwhile, in Falluja, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its experts has visited the ruined city to take stock of the humanitarian situation there, before the planned return of around 250,000 refugees from December 24 commenced.

An ICRC spokesman said the water purification plants in Falluja were dysfunctional, and the refugees who were returning would have to depend on mobile tanks.

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