The troops from the 1st Armored Division were on a routine patrol when
the ambush occurred about 8 p.m. Thursday, the military said. No further
details were released.
Earlier Thursday, a bomber crashed a white Oldsmobile loaded with
explosives into a police station in the Sadr City neighborhood, killing
himself and nine other people and wounding as many as 45. Sadr City is the
largest Shiite Muslim enclave in the Iraqi capital.
Also Thursday, gunmen � one dressed as a Muslim cleric � shot and
killed a Spanish military attache.
The violence, six months to the day after Baghdad fell to American
forces, underscored the predicament of a capital whose deliverance from
Saddam Hussein's tyranny has been repeatedly undermined by terrorism,
attacks on U.S. forces and sectarian unrest.
The ancient city's landscape is now lined with massive concrete blast
barriers and coils of barbed wire outside hotels, government departments
and along stretches of road near U.S. military bases.
There was no claim of responsibility for the car bombing in Sadr City,
a Baghdad district with an estimated 2 million Shiites.
"It was a huge blast and everything became dark from the debris and
sand. I was thrown to the ground," said Mohammed Adnan, who sells
watermelons opposite the police station.
Vegetable seller Fakhriya Jarallah said two of her sons were repairing
the outside wall of the compound.
"I ran across the road like a madwoman to find out what happened to my
sons. But thanks to God they are both safe," she said.
Policemen and some in the crowd that gathered outside the police
station after the explosion offered an assortment of possible culprits
ranging from non-Iraqi Arab militants to Saddam loyalists and Shiite
radicals angry about a cleric's arrest.
The killing of the Spanish military attache happened across town in the
upscale Mansour area about 30 minutes before the car bombing.
Jose Antonio Bernal Gomez, an air force sergeant attached to Spain's
National Intelligence Center, was shot to death after four men, one
dressed as a Muslim cleric, knocked on the door of his home, according to
a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A guard in the area, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said
Gomez opened the door to the gunmen. When they tried to grab him, he ran
outside and was shot. The guard said he heard six shots and Gomez was hit
in the head at least once.
American, Iraqi and Spanish authorities were investigating the attack,
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Commenting on Thursday's violence, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S.
official in Iraq, emphasized his government's commitment to fighting
terrorism, branding the perpetrators of attacks in Iraq as individuals who
have shown "wanton disregard" for the lives of innocent people.
In other developments Thursday:
_ Iraq's national electricity network � crippled by war, looting and
sabotage � has surpassed the production levels of the prewar period for
the first time in six months, Bremer reported.
_ U.S. troops arrested an Iraqi resistance leader believed to be
responsible for scores of deadly attacks against American forces around
Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. They also uncovered a factory where deadly
roadside bombs were being built.
_ A 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled
grenade attack on a U.S. convoy northeast of Baghdad, the military said.
_ U.S. soldiers conducted a raid Sunday near the Syrian border and
detained 112 suspects, including a high-ranking official in the former
Republican Guard, the miltary announced Thursday.
_ Bremer said Thursday he welcomed the White House's decision for a new
coordinating committee for Iraq. Bremer reports to the Defense Department,
but it was disclosed earlier this week the White House had set up an
oversight committee for Iraq operations.
In Sadr City, some 50 policemen had gathered in the police station's
courtyard to collect their pay when the white Oldsmobile sped up. Two
policemen on guard duty at the gate opened fire, but the car, with driver
and passenger, crashed into a parked vehicle and exploded.
"I ran and got hit in the leg. When I looked back, all I could see was
fire," officer Khalid Sattar Jabar said from his hospital bed. He said he
got a look at the driver: a man with a beard and a thick head of hair.
Mangled police cars were scattered around the bomb site, and debris
filled the large courtyard in front of the one-story police building. The
blast left a crater about 10 feet across and 4 feet deep, said a U.S. Army
officer at the scene.
Three policemen and five civilians were killed, said Capt. Sean Kirley
of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. In addition, the two people in the
car died, said Iraqi police Capt. Bassem Sami.
Hospitals reported treating 45 wounded.
The blast attracted a crowd of up to about 2,000 people. The crowd
became angry when scores of American soldiers in Humvees arrived and put a
security ring around the area. There was panic later when two men ran in
shouting that another car bomb was about to go off; it was a false alarm.
Still later, the crowd became agitated when a rumor spread that
American soldiers were surrounding the nearby office of Muqtada al-Sadr, a
Shiite cleric who opposes the U.S. occupation. He was not at the office,
and his Baghdad representative, Sheik Qais al-Khaza'ali, said soldiers had
wanted to search the office but left without doing so.
Hundreds of al-Sadr supporters, armed with assault rifles and
rocket-propelled grenades, guarded the office in the afternoon, sealing
off streets leading to it and taking positions on rooftops.
The mainly Shiite area was known as Saddam City until Saddam's ouster,
when it was renamed for al-Sadr's father, a Shiite cleric killed in 1999
by suspected security agents.
The area has been tense for days, with supporters of the younger
al-Sadr demanding that the U.S.-appointed local council be replaced by one
they say was democratically elected in polls they organized.
An Iraqi policeman who pushed through the crowd was stabbed in the arm
after being set upon by the mob, which chanted "No, no to America!" He was
treated by U.S. military medics at the scene.
The crowd also attacked Associated Press Television News camera crews
and stole some equipment. One crew member was slightly injured. Scores of
other journalists, including Iraqis, were jostled by the crowd.
Opinions differed about who might have been behind the bombing.
Saad Drawal al-Dharaji, a wounded police sergeant, said an imam had
threatened to take action against the police station unless it turned over
some policemen for "punishment" for having served under Saddam.
"We will have our revenge for this," al-Dharaji said. He didn't know
the name of the cleric.
Wounded officer Jabar said another possible motive for the attack was
the detention of Shiite cleric Moayed al-Khazraji, who was arrested by
American forces Monday.
The cleric's supporters rallied at the police station Wednesday to
demand his release, but dispersed peacefully. Iraqi police said the cleric
is not in their custody.
