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September deadliest month for troops Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Posted on Tue, Oct. 05, 2004
Two Baghdad car bombs kill 21
By Patrick Kerkstra
Inquirer Staff Writer
BAGHDAD - Insurgents detonated two car bombs yesterday in Baghdad, killing 21 people and wounding 96 on a day of widespread violence.
More than three dozen car bombings since the beginning of September illustrate the insurgents' seeming ability to strike at will despite recent pledges by the United States and Iraq to intensify the suppression of the attackers.
In another indication that the violence is not letting up, September was the second-deadliest month of the year for U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a count by the Associated Press. The death toll was 80, up from 65 in August and equal to the 80 who died in May. The deadliest month was April, with 135 deaths.
In yesterday's attacks in Baghdad, a bomb apparently targeting police recruits exploded just outside the gates of the Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and key Iraqi government offices are located. About an hour later, a second bomb went off near several hotels frequented by foreign contractors.
In another attack, gunmen killed two employees of the Sciences and Technology Ministry in a Baghdad suburb. Two explosions in the northern city of Mosul killed three, including the two bombers, and injured at least 11. U.S. air strikes on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah killed 11, doctors there said. A police commander and another person also were killed in Baqubah, a city 35 miles northeast of the capital.
And the U.S. military confirmed that two American soldiers at a traffic checkpoint were killed by small-arms fire in an attack Sunday.
The attacks by the insurgents are targeting some of Iraq's most vulnerable.
Weam Mohammed and five friends left their hometown of Al-Kut this week to look for work in Baghdad, desperate after a year's unemployment.
Four of them were killed yesterday morning, along with at least 11 other police recruits, as they lined up to apply for work in Iraq's security force. A suicide bomber blew up a four-wheel-drive vehicle near the Green Zone, sending shrapnel whizzing through a crowd of about 1,000 waiting applicants. About 85 were wounded.
It was the latest in a series of strikes targeting recruits and security personnel that have killed at least 100 in the last month.
The applicants keep coming.
"They told us to come back next Saturday if we still want the job. And I will come back," said Mohammed, 24. "Either I will die, or I will have this job."
It is not love of country or hatred for the insurgents that motivates Mohammed. "There are no other job opportunities," he said. "I have looked everywhere."
In a country where the official unemployment rate tops 50 percent - and many think it is much higher - there has been no shortage of people ready to risk their lives for a job that pays about $230 a month.
Besides, Mohammed said, no one is truly safe in Iraq anymore.
A video that insurgents released yesterday showed the execution of two hostages seized in Iraq. They were identified as a Turk and an Italian national of Iraqi origin. Kidnappers also freed two Indonesian women.
All told, yesterday's violence left 40 people dead and at least 130 wounded.
In the blast near the Green Zone, the recruits said they were waiting for a senior officer to arrive when the blast occurred. Most were waiting in a small building next to the Green Zone entry point.
When the explosion hit, recruits inside and outside the building were injured. Several said they were knocked off their feet by the blast, and arose to find themselves surrounded by blood, body parts and debris.
The second Baghdad blast appeared to target a convoy of sport-utility vehicles. A pickup truck packed with dates and explosives plowed into a three-vehicle convoy as it left a parking lot shared by several high-rise hotels housing hundreds of foreign contractors and journalists, officials said.
The area around the hotels and the Green Zone have been targets of previous attacks that have killed dozens of people.
Last month saw at least 39 car-bomb attacks in Iraq.
The 80 deaths of U.S. military personnel in September helped push the toll since the Iraq invasion began in March 2003 to 1,058 as of yesterday, the Pentagon said.
In remarks yesterday to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld noted the U.S. death toll in Iraq now exceeded 1,000 and lamented the losses.
He said the violence in Iraq that was killing large numbers of Iraqi civilians as well as Americans was a price that must be paid to ensure the extremists did not achieve their aims.
"It is often, on some bad days, not a pretty picture at all," he said. "In fact it can be dangerous and ugly, but the road from tyranny to freedom has never been peaceful or tranquil."
More troops charged. The U.S. Army charged four soldiers with murder yesterday, accusing them of suffocating an Iraqi general during an interrogation last fall in Iraq. Chief Warrant Officers Jefferson L. Williams and Lewis E. Welshofer Jr., Sgt. First Class William J. Sommer, and Spec. Jerry L. Loper could get life in prison without parole in the Nov. 26 death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, 57, at Qaim, Iraq.
All four soldiers were assigned to the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson, Colo. The charges bring to at least 10 the number of U.S. troops charged with murder in the deaths of Iraqis.
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