Rebels Attack U.S. Convoy Near Baghdad

Rebels attacked a U.S. military convoy north of Baghdad, leaving an armored personnel carrier burning on the side of the highway, witnesses said Friday. A blast near a mosque in Baghdad injured 20 people.

U.S. troops cordoned off a section of the main highway in Mishada, 20 miles north of the capital, after a military vehicle was destroyed by an explosive. It was seen burning on the side of the road.

Witnesses said that the attack happened at 5:30 a.m., and that there were several casualties among the soldiers. The U.S. military, however, said it had no information about the incident.

A blast near al-Samarrai mosque in the New Baghdad section of the capital wounded about 20 people, but it was not immediately clear what caused the explosion. The injured were evacuated to al-Kindi hospital, witnesses said.

On Thursday, guerrillas fired on a police station in Ramadi, a town west of Baghdad, wounding six Iraqis, and a roadside bomb destroyed a U.S. armored vehicle in the capital. There were no American casualties in either attack.

Two rockets struck the Ramadi Police Directorate, 100 miles west of Baghdad, as officers gathered inside to receive their monthly salaries, said Maj. Samir Habib. Two policemen and four civilians were wounded, he said.

Ramadi, a town on the main highway between Iraq and Jordan, is part of the so-called Sunni Triangle – a region north and west of Baghdad that has seen fierce resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

In south-central Baghdad, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb near an American military vehicle, witnesses said. Smoke billowed from the tracked, armored vehicle while helicopters clattered overhead and U.S. soldiers cordoned off the area.

“Everybody got out in time,” said Sgt. James Thompson, a soldier at the scene.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces kept up their daily raids against suspected rebel strongholds, according to U.S. military reports.

Soldiers from the Army’s 1st Infantry Division killed one Iraqi and arrested nine others after they were ambushed in the town of Khaldiyah, 60 miles west of Baghdad.

Nineteen other guerrilla suspects were captured by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in a raid in Husaybah, a restive town near the Syrian border. And the 82nd Airborne Division detained 19 others in the western town of Nassir Wa al-Salaam, the military reported.