Suicide Attack Kills 5 G.I.’s and 2 Iraqis in Northern City
Five American soldiers and two members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in a massive suicide truck bombing Friday near the headquarters of the Iraqi national police in the northern city of Mosul, a United States military spokesman said.
It was the deadliest attack against American soldiers here in 13 months and the second in Mosul since February, when four soldiers were killed in a suicide car bomb attack against their patrol. At least 60 people, many of them residents of the area, were wounded in the Friday attack and a number of homes and businesses were severely damaged, according to Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Jubbouri, a spokesman for the local police.
The Interior Ministry’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, told the state television station network Iraqiya that the truck was packed with about 2,000 pounds of explosives.
Maj. Derrick Cheng, a military spokesman in northern Iraq, said a preliminary investigation indicated that the truck bomber struck as an American military convoy drove past the headquarters of the national police on the southwestern outskirts of Mosul.
He said two suspects had been detained in connection with the attack.
Despite numerous military operations, Mosul remains one of the most active centers for the insurgency, which is believed to be a mixture of Sunni extremists linked to Al Qaeda and groups affiliated with the former ruling Baath Party. Arab-Kurdish hostilities also continue to fuel violence in Mosul.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had dispatched last fall about 3,000 members of the national police, which is a paramilitary force, to help subdue Mosul.
The attack occurred one day after the sixth anniversary of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime by American-led foreign troops.
