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Iraq Attacks Kill 4 U.S. Service Members

Posted on: Saturday, 1 May 2004, 06:00 CDT

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Insurgents killed a U.S. soldier and two civilian contractors in northern Iraq and attacked a U.S. convoy Saturday in Baghdad, as scores of people took to the streets of Fallujah to celebrate a deal to end a monthlong siege of the city.

The soldier was killed in a roadside bomb attack on his convoy Saturday near the town of Qarraya, 45 miles south of Mosul, the military said. A second soldier died Saturday of wounds suffered in a Friday roadside bombing in the same area. The latest deaths brought to 140 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the current wave of violence began in early April.

In another Saturday bombing, two foreign contractors were killed and five other foreigners were injured in an attack in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military and witnesses said. Nationalities of the victims were unavailable.

In the Baghdad attack, a bomb set a military tanker truck ablaze as a convoy traveled along the main highway between Fallujah and the capital. When U.S. reinforcements arrived, the attackers fired four mortar shells, which caused no casualties, witnesses said.

Elsewhere, a British soldier was wounded Saturday in an ambush in the southeastern city of Amarah, the British military said. The Al-Mahdi Army, led by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is active in the area.

The latest violence followed a deal signaling the apparent end of the siege of Fallujah, launched last month after a mob killed four U.S. contractors and mutilated their bodies.

Amid mounting international criticism, the U.S. military forged an agreement to withdraw U.S. Marines from much of the city and turn over security to an Iraqi force made up largely of former soldiers from Saddam Hussein's army, which the U.S.-led occupation authority disbanded last year.

The agreement proceeded despite the deaths of four U.S. troops Friday in the volatile region west of Baghdad. Two Marines were killed in a car bombing near Fallujah and two sailors died in another incident in the same province.

Some 1,360 Iraqis have also died, according to a count by The Associated Press - more than in any month since Saddam's fall.

By Saturday, all 700 Marines of the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment had pulled out of the industrial zone, their main forward base inside Fallujah.

With the siege apparently over, scores of Iraqis gathered in the streets Saturday morning, some flashing "V" for victory signs and raising the Iraqi flag. Motorists drove through the streets, shouting "Islam, it's your day!" and "We redeem Islam with our blood!"

Malik Khalif, who fled the city during the fighting, looked at the remains of his destroyed house. "I don't mind losing and sacrificing my life or my properties for the sake of the honorable resistance of Fallujah," he said.

Saeed Abid also returned for a reunion with his family. "I'm happy to see my sons, my wife and grandsons again. I'm happy to see them alive," said Abid, a grocer.

Members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council praised the agreement to lift the siege of Fallujah, saying it spared the city an all-out Marine assault and would help reduce tensions that were inflaming anti-American anger throughout Iraq.

"The withdrawal is a good step to defuse the crisis and spare bloodshed," said Dara Nor al-Din, a Kurdish member of the council. "There is wisdom in that."

After days of threatening an all-out offensive against insurgents in Fallujah, the United States rapidly changed tacks and reached the deal for a pullback - or "repositioning," as commanders have called it. Washington was facing strong international pressure to peacefully resolve the standoff, and many U.S. officials feared that attacking the city would be extremely bloody.

The answer was to call in a former Saddam general, Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, to deal with insurgents - though to include many disgruntled army veterans - in a shift from previous U.S. strategy, which abolished the Iraqi army last year and called for marginalizing former members of Saddam's Baath Party.

Under the plan, a force of 600 to 1,100 Iraqis, many of them former soldiers from the Fallujah area, are to man checkpoints inside of the city. Marines will remain on or near the city's perimeter and at a later stage conduct their own patrols inside the city.

At the checkpoint at the main eastern entrance to the city, Gen. Saleh shook hands with Col. John Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment, as Iraqi forces raised their own flag over a checkpoint that Marines were withdrawing from.

Saleh - a burly ex-member of Saddam's Republican Guard with a Saddam-style mustache - arrived in the city to the cheers of some residents.

Convoys of U.S. troops and equipment could be seen heading out of parts of Fallujah, replaced by red-bereted Iraqi troopers from the new force.

"Initially it appears that the transition to the Fallujah Protective Army is working," said Marine. Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne. "It's a delicate situation. The Fallujah Protective Army is the Iraqi solution we've all been looking for in this area."

The Fallujah force will be under the ultimate command of the U.S. Marines.

Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. operations in the Middle East warned that "it may be necessary to have a strong fight in there," if the insurgents don't cooperate.

Abizaid said the United States was sticking to most of the objectives outlined when the Marines stormed Fallujah on April 5 - mainly to seize men who killed and mutilated four American contractors and force foreign fighters to leave the city.

"Clearly, we will not tolerate the presence of foreign fighters," Abizaid said. "We will insist on the heavy weapons coming off the streets. We want the Marines to have freedom of maneuver along with the Iraqi security forces."

He appeared, however, to soften from initial demands that heavy weapons are turned over to security forces.

For Marine Pfc. Andrew Twocrow of Ignacio, Colo., the withdrawal was bittersweet.

One of Twocrow's buddies was killed in an ambush in Fallujah.

"After that I was upset. I wanted to stay there and fight it to the end," he said.

Negotiations were also taking place in the southern city of Najaf, where tribal leaders and police agreed to a three-day truce as part of a plan to resolve a standoff between soldiers and militiamen loyal to al-Sadr.

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AP correspondent Scheherezade Faramarzi in Najaf contributed to this report.

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