[Excerpt: The brazen strike came on the heels of a new poll showing US skepticism about the war in Iraq at a new high and added to concerns over whether landmark elections scheduled for January 30 could go ahead....In a revised toll, 13 US soldiers, five US civilian contractors, three Iraqi soldiers and one unidentified body counted among the dead, Myers said. Sixty-nine people were wounded in the attack, 44 of them US soldiers, the general said.] _http://sg.news.yahoo.com/041222/1/3pfs0.html_ (http://sg.news.yahoo.com/041222/1/3pfs0.html) Thursday December 23, 6:17 AM Suicide bomber struck US base in Iraq A top US general said the blast that killed 22 people in a US military mess hall in Iraq appeared to be a suicide bombing. With violence threatening Iraq's landmark January 30 elections, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that it would be "a mistake" to think that deadly chaos in Iraq will subside after next month's polls. In a shocking twist, a powerful explosion at a packed army mess hall in Mosul on Tuesday, claimed by Al-Qaeda linked militants, was probably the work of a suicide bomber, said the chairman of US Joint Chief of Staffs, General Richard Myers. "At this point, it looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker," Myers told reporters at the Pentagon, suggesting that an insurgent had infiltrated the US base before detonating the bomb. The fact a suicide attacker slipped inside a fortified US military compound raised serious questions and Myers said the military would now investigate security at the base and how the assailant was able to get in. An FBI team of explosive experts had been dispatched to the city to determine the cause of the attack. The US military swept Mosul Wednesday for insurgents following the blast, shutting down bridges across the Tigris River, which runs down the middle of the city. The brazen strike came on the heels of a new poll showing US skepticism about the war in Iraq at a new high and added to concerns over whether landmark elections scheduled for January 30 could go ahead. In a revised toll, 13 US soldiers, five US civilian contractors, three Iraqi soldiers and one unidentified body counted among the dead, Myers said. Sixty-nine people were wounded in the attack, 44 of them US soldiers, the general said. Responsibility was claimed by Al-Qaeda linked Ansar al-Sunna, which said it was a suicide bombing against "American crusaders". Mosul, the third-largest city in Iraq, was once considered a success story of the defunct US occupation in the country, but has been transformed into a battleground between insurgents and US forces. The day after British Prime Minister Tony Blair cautioned that bloodshed would carry on past the January polls, US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld warned "looking for a peaceful Iraq after the elections would be a mistake." In a rare positive development, French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot returned home to Paris to a hero's welcome after four months in captivity at the hands of the Islamic Army in Iraq. Late Wednesday, a fuel tanker exploded in the trouble spot of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 20, said a local hospital official. Locals called it a bombing, but a marine spokesman said a team of military explosives experts found no evidence of any bomb material. Meanwhile, about 2,000 residents of Fallujah, one of Iraq's most devastated cities since a US offensive there last month to root out insurgents, were expected to return home on Thursday, in a first wave of those displaced by the fighting. As the US and Iraqi governments were banking on a strong Iraqi police force to play a role in Fallujah, the head of the Al-Anbar police department resigned, a police officer said. Brigadier General Fawwaz Armut al-Dulaimi quit over the interior ministry's decision to slash Anbar's police force by 50 percent, said fellow Brigadier General Abdel Salam al-Dulaimi. The police in Anbar, home to Fallujah, have been dogged by corruption. And an oil pipeline feeding the refinery at Baiji in northern Iraq was repaired after being sabotaged earlier this week, an oil ministry official said. But two more pipelines were blown up on Monday and Tuesday, an oil ministry spokesman said. The routes were linked to Baghdad. The spokesman said the attacks were meant to steal oil for the black market. An Iraqi police crackdown in the Shiite holy city of Najaf after a deadly weekend bombing sparked a gunfight that left one policeman and one insurgent dead overnight, an officer said. Four suspected Islamist extremists were also arrested in the raids, which followed a car bombing on Sunday that killed 52 people and wounded more than 140 after a similar blast in the pilgrimage city of Karbala that killed 14. In the wake of the bombings, Iran banned its nationals from travelling to Iraq. A Kurdish policeman was shot dead outside Kirkuk, and a former general under Saddam Hussein and a sniper, wanted for killing Americans, were arrested inside the city, police sources said. In another dose of bad news, Contrack International Incorporated became the first major US contractor to pull out of the reconstruction effort in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times said, adding that high security costs were to blame. enditem
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
