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Troops Kill 5 Iraqis After Convoy Bombed

Posted on: Sunday, 9 January 2005, 12:00 CST

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American troops opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing at least two policemen and three civilians, police said Sunday, a day after the U.S. military acknowledged five people were killed when it bombed the wrong house during a search operation in northern Iraq.

In an apparent accident, seven Ukrainians and one Kazakh serving with the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq were killed Sunday in an explosion while loading bombs that could be used by warplanes, officials said.

Lt. Col. Artur Domanski, a Polish military spokesman in Iraq, said the explosion occurred at about noon at an ammunition dump about six miles south of Suwaira. Eleven soldiers were wounded - seven Ukrainians and four Kazakhs, he said.

The violence came after a senior U.S. Embassy official in Iraq met Saturday with leaders of the Sunni Arab community to apply political pressure against their threat to boycott Jan. 30 elections.

A spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, a powerful Sunni group, said Sunday it would abandon its call for an election boycott if the United States gave a timetable for withdrawing multinational forces, a spokesman for the group said Sunday.

It is extremely unlikely the United States would consider giving a timetable for a withdrawal.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan described Saturday's meeting between the Americans and Sunnis as an "exchange of views." He would not identify the American official who participated, but he said it was not Ambassador John Negroponte.

South of Mosul, the owner of the house that was struck on Saturday, Ali Yousef, said 14 people were killed when the 500-pound GPS-guided bomb hit in the town of Aitha. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said seven children and seven adults died. The discrepancy between the death counts could not be reconciled.

The U.S. military later released a statement saying it regretted the loss of "possibly innocent lives" in the strike, which occurred as U.S. ground troops searched for "an anti-Iraqi force cell leader." American troops recently sent more troops to Mosul, which has seen heavy clashes in recent weeks between insurgents and American forces.

The attacks come at an extremely delicate time, with Iraq roiled by violence just three weeks before elections for a national assembly. The United States has insisted that the vote go ahead on Jan. 30.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked how he would define success in Iraq's election, and he acknowledged concern about what would happen after the vote.

"Success is putting in place a government that is really elected and represents all of the people of Iraq ... and creating an Iraqi security force that is able to protect the country and protect the people of Iraq," he said on ABC's "This Week."

U.S. officials said they had no information about the shooting at the checkpoint, which occurred overnight Saturday. Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said a U.S. convoy was hit by a roadside bomb near a police checkpoint in Yussifiyah, nine miles south of Baghdad, and troops opened fire, killing two police and three civilians.

Dr. Anmar Abdul-Hadi of the al-Yarmouk hospital said eight people were killed in the attack and 12 were wounded.

American commanders recently have said they were changing tactics in the way they respond to roadside bombings. Rather than pushing on after the blast, they now stop and try to engage the perpetrators, who may have detonated the explosives remotely.

Few details about the deaths of the Ukrainians and Kazakh were known. Domanski said an investigation had been launched. Ukraine's Defense Ministry said soldiers were loading aviation bombs when one device exploded.

Ukraine serves in a Polish-led contingent in south central Iraq and is the fourth-largest contributor of troops to the U.S.-led war effort with 1,650 soldiers. Kazakhstan has sent a 27-strong contingent of military engineers to Iraq and is the only Central Asian nation to contribute troops to forces there.

Nine Ukrainian soldiers have died in Iraq, including three in combat, and more than 20 have been wounded.

Also Sunday, a U.S. soldier assigned to the Task Force Baghdad was killed in a roadside bomb explosion, the military said, although it did not say where the attack occurred. The name of the soldier was withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The deputy police chief of Samarra, Col. Mohammed Mudhafir, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Mudhafir was driving alone and was dressed in civilian clothes when killed by unknown assailants, Samarra police Maj. Raed Ahmed said.

Britain is expected to announce next week that it will send an extra 650 soldiers to Iraq to bolster security for the elections, a London newspaper reported.

The Sunday Telegraph said the deployment of a battalion of Royal Highland Fusiliers would boost British troop levels in Iraq to about 9,000. A Defense Ministry spokesman confirmed that the 650-strong battalion was on standby.

The election is the first democratic vote in Iraq since the country was formed in 1932, and the Sunnis are certain to lose their dominance to the Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people. Sunni leaders have urged the vote be postponed, largely because areas of Iraq where they dominate are far too restive for preparations to begin.

On Saturday, the spokesman for Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission, Fareed Ayar, said the number of polling centers around Iraq will be 5,220. The figure excludes the volatile Anbar province. Baghdad alone will have 1,454 centers, he said.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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