Introducing an ominous tactic to the war in Iraq, an Iraqi soldier killed four U.S. infantrymen and himself Saturday after beckoning them to the taxi he was driving and detonating a bomb hidden inside.
The explosion near the front lines of the U.S.-led advance on Baghdad marked the first suicide bombing against Americans in the 10-day-old conflict and added to an atmosphere of anxiety in which U.S. and British troops already are struggling to separate civilians from guerrillas.
U.S. officials called the attack a “desperate” measure by Saddam Hussein’s regime. But Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan vowed that such attacks against U.S. forces would become routine as the war unfolds.
“This is just the beginning. You’ll hear more pleasant news later,” Ramadan said in Baghdad. “We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land, and we will follow the enemy into its land.”
A few minutes after the bombing, Bradley armored vehicles destroyed three other taxis that tried to dash through another checkpoint on the road to Najaf, killing an unknown number of occupants, a New York Times correspondent said.
Col. William Grimsley, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade, said it did not appear those taxis were packed with explosives, but he noted that “it certainly happened near simultaneously.”
The bomb attack came as U.S. aircraft and missiles hammered Republican Guard positions and key military and government sites in Baghdad, apparently in preparation for a renewed push toward the capital. Allied generals at U.S. Central Command in Qatar and at the Pentagon continued to rebut reports that they had ordered a delay in military operations because of problems with supplying the front lines.
President Bush again sounded a cautionary note in his weekly radio address, saying there was no way to know how long the war would last. In the face of criticism over Iraqi civilian deaths, Pentagon officials launched a public relations offensive designed to illuminate the brutality of the Hussein regime.
In Iraq, U.S. forces were trying to determine whether four American bodies discovered in a shallow grave near Nasiriyah were soldiers captured in an ambush a week ago.
The suicide bombing forced commanders to order increased security at road checkpoints across southern Iraq. Officials said the Iraqi who carried out the attack pretended to be a taxi driver summoning help at a U.S. checkpoint near Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad.
Ramadan identified the bomber as Nayef Ali Jaafar al-Noamani, a junior army officer and father of several children. The vice president said Hussein posthumously awarded al-Noamani two medals.
“The United States will turn the whole world to martyrs against it,” Ramadan said.
State television described the attack as “the blessed beginning of sacrifice and martyrdom.”
The incident raised fears that the allies could face the same kind of attacks carried out in Beirut during the Lebanon civil war and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In response, troops may have to take more extreme measures to protect themselves, further alienating the local population.
The bombing also raised the question of whether the Iraqis were adopting tactics used by terrorist groups such as Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.
“It looks and feels like terrorism,” Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said at the Pentagon. “It won’t change our overall rules of engagement but, to protect our soldiers, it clearly requires great care.”
The dead soldiers, not yet identified, came from the 1st Brigade of the Army’s 3rd Infantry.
At the Central Command’s daily briefing in Doha, Qatar, Air Force Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart said the U.S. had stopped Tomahawk cruise missile launches over Saudi Arabia after complaints that some had landed in the Saudi desert. The missiles were fired by ships in the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
On the ground, allied commanders reported captures of paramilitary and commando troops in western Iraq and said Apache helicopters had destroyed tanks, other armored vehicles and artillery belonging to the Republican Guard’s Medina Division, dug in 30 miles south of Baghdad.
Baath headquarters hit
Coalition aircraft also struck nine headquarters of Hussein’s Baath Party across Iraq, said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks. One attack on a site near the besieged city of Basra killed about 200 fighters, he said.
Tomahawk missiles plunged through the roof of Iraq’s Information Ministry early Saturday, forcing its evacuation.
Renuart disputed reports that supplies were an increasing concern for the coalition troops spread from the Kuwait border nearly to Baghdad. Guerrilla attacks on convoys, he said, have become fewer and have involved smaller numbers of Iraqi fighters.
Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division, who moved into Iraq only in the past two days, battled about 50 guerrillas believed to be members of the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary group Saturday night.
Col. Karl Horst, the division chief of staff, said 14 Fedayeen were killed and three were wounded and captured. The division has been assigned to root out an estimated 1,000 Fedayeen in south-central Iraq.
In Washington, the Pentagon unveiled video clips of Iraqis describing torture and the horrors of a 1988 chemical weapons attack carried out by the regime.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said the images, shown during a briefing broadcast by several news organizations, were intended to remind viewers of Hussein’s human-rights record and to blunt the Iraqi government’s criticism of civilian deaths caused by U.S. and British bombing.
McChrystal said the U.S. was investigating the two incidents last week in which dozens of civilians were killed in Baghdad.
The British government suggested Saturday that both bombs actually were Iraqi surface-to-air missiles that had gone astray. But the Iraqi government said both explosions were caused by U.S. missiles.
In addition, British officials said Hussein had fired his cousin as head of Iraq’s air defense, possibly because anti-aircraft missiles had missed their targets and fallen on the capital. Since the war began, allied forces have reported almost no air resistance. They claim control of 95 percent of Iraq’s airspace.
In northern Iraq, regime troops pulled back from more swaths of territory, apparently to set up a tighter defense perimeter around the key oil city of Kirkuk.
The orderly withdrawal of thousands of regular army soldiers coincides with intensifying American bombing runs against Iraqi front-line positions and a growing American buildup in the Kurd-controlled enclaves in the north.
On Saturday, the 173rd Airborne Brigade that had parachuted into north-central Iraq on Wednesday reached full strength after several nights of busy airlifts, according to a knowledgeable Western source.
The pullout of Iraqi troops has opened up eerie new neutral zones, as they have left behind empty villages, army bases and farms.
“Some Iraqi forces have gone all the way back to the outskirts of Kirkuk,” said Mam Rostam, a Kurdish commander. “They may want to draw the Americans into the city.”
The Kurdish militias also declared victory over the extremist Islamic group Ansar al-Islam, saying U.S. air strikes and ground fighting had virtually eliminated the group’s military capacity.
Protests resume
Hundreds of thousands of people came out around the world to demonstrate against the war. In Germany, an estimated 30,000 people held hands in a 31-mile chain between two cities. In Athens, 15,000 protesters marched outside the U.S. Embassy and threw paint at a McDonald’s restaurant.
In the U.S., thousands gathered at the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg. Other demonstrations were reported in New York and Boulder, Colo.
At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II said he hoped the war would not create a “religious catastrophe” between Muslims and Christians.
Bush, spending the weekend at Camp David, said in his weekly radio address that some U.S. forces were less than 50 miles from Baghdad but cautioned that he did not know how long the war would last. He accused the Hussein regime of murdering citizens who refused to fight and of hanging a woman who waved at coalition forces.
In New York, editors at Newsday said they believed that correspondent Matthew McAllester and photographer Moises Saman, who disappeared from their Baghdad hotel last week, were being detained by the Iraqi government.
