Bomb at Italian Base in Iraq Kills at Least 26 :(

the bolded quote shows Bush uses this as another opportunity to call Anti-Occupation Iraqi resistence "terrorism" and link it to 9-11
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Bomb at Italian Base in Iraq Kills at Least 26
18 Italians Among Dead
By Anthony Shadid, Fred Barbash and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 12, 2003; 5:14 PM


NASIRIYAH, Iraq, Nov. 12 -- A suicide car bomber crashed into an Italian military police headquarters in this southern town Wednesday and set off a huge explosion that killed at least 26 people, 18 of them Italians.



At least 60 people suffered injuries in the blast, which came as L. Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, held talks in Washington with President Bush and his advisers on ways to speed up the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution and the handover of power to an Iraqi government.

Hours after the bombing, the deadliest single assault in an exceptionally deadly month, U.S. Army forces launched attacks in Baghdad against a facility described as a key site for insurgents and against assailants using a van to fire mortars at U.S. targets. A U.S. military spokesman said the attacks killed two Iraqis and destroyed a building used by the insurgents.

Capt. David Gercken said the attacks, involving an AC-130 gunship, Apache helicopters and armored vehicles, were part of "Operation Iron Hammer," which was launched Wednesday.

After nightfall, the capital reverberated with the sounds of at least two dozen explosions and heavy gunfire that appeared to be originating from the south of the city.

The operation, by units of the 1st Armored Division, was intended to "deny enemy elements use of a specific facility in southern Baghdad," a spokesman said. He declined to identify the facility specifically but said it was "a known meeting, planning, storage and rendezvous point for belligerent elements currently conducting attacks on coalition forces and infrastructure."

The assault appeared to have been planned before the bombing of the police headquarters in Nasiriyah, a town on the Euphrates river about 235 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The bombing tore the front off the riverside, three-story concrete building, set cars on fire, badly damaged nearby houses and shattered windows hundreds of yards away. Officials of the multinational forces in southern Iraq, part of the U.S.-led coalition, said the car that detonated closely followed a truck that led the way by crashing into the entrance of the military police headquarters.

The attack appeared to demonstrate the capacity of the insurgents to maneuver among targets of opportunity and to strike in the south of Iraq as well as in the north and west.

The news jarred Italians, who have not experienced such a lethal attack since World War II. At the White House President Bush offered his sympathy, support and gratitude for Italy's role in the U.S.-led Iraqi operation. "Today in Iraq, a member of NATO -- Italy -- lost some proud sons," Bush said.

" . . . We appreciate their sacrifice," he said, adding,"I appreciate the steadfast leadership of Prime Minister [Silvio] Berlusconi, who refuses to yield in the face of terrorism."

Witnesses told a reporter that they first heard several shots fired about 10:30 a.m. local time Wednesday, followed by the screech of tires on pavement, and then, within seconds, a thundering blast. One bystander compared the sound of the car bomb with a bomb dropped from a warplane.

The blast's impact hurled debris and body parts over a hundred yards. Smoke hung in the air for hours afterward. Italian officials said that among the dead were at least 12 Carabinieri paramilitary police, four Italian army soldiers, two Italian civilians including a documentary filmmaker and at least eight Iraqis.

While November has been the most violent month in Iraq since the end of formal combat in May, most of the attacks, until today, have been in and around the so-called "Sunni triangle" north and west of Baghdad. U.S. officials have repeatedly stressed that the rest of Iraq has been relatively calm.
In other violence, a bomb attack in Baghdad on Tuesday killed a U.S. soldier and wounded two, according to a U.S. military statement issued Wednesday. The U.S. military also said a U.S. soldier was killed north of Baghdad on Tuesday evening when his vehicle drove over a bomb planted on a road.



Also Wednesday, U.S. troops in Baghdad accidentally fired on a car carrying a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. The council member, Muhammed Bahr Uloum, an independent Shiite Muslim leader, escaped injury but the driver was wounded.

In a written statement, the Pentagon issued an apology.

In the violence-prone town of Fallujah, a hotbed of anti-occupation activity, Iraqi residents said American soldiers killed at least five civilians, including a 10-year old boy, on Monday night after spraying an area near a hospital with bullets while trying to hit a truckload of thieves. The thieves had fired at the Americans, witnesses said.

The dead Iraqis reportedly were making an evening delivery of live chickens when they approached a U.S. checkpoint. Just moments before, at least two Iraqis in a truck laden with metal pipes tried to run the roadblock. Iraqi police had alerted the soldiers.

The Americans fired heavy automatic rounds, witnesses said, but hit the chicken truck. Hashem Jassem, his brother Wissam, Walid Mohammed, Majid Khaled and his 10-year old boy Khaled were killed, Iraqi residents said.

"The Americans shot all over the place. They just shot like they were crazy," said Ziad Abud Abadi, who runs a gift kiosk in front of the Jordanian hospital at the entrance of Fallujah. One of the bullets put an inch-wide hole in his metal sales shelter.

At Fallujah's dusty main cemetery today, mourners gathered with a mixture of sadness and anger at the turn of events. "This is so bad. Was it worth the shooting?" said Kathen Adnan, 23, a friend of the victims.

At the hospital where five wounded bystanders were being treated, visitors yelled, "The Americans will pay!" and "Revenge! Revenge!"

The 82nd Airborne Division, which has been fighting in Fallujah, gave an entirely different version of events. In a statement, the unit said that one vehicle drove up and passengers fired at the soldiers. The troops fired back, the assailants tried to flee into a second vehicle, then a third approached at a "high rate of speed" and the soldiers shot again, killing two passengers, the statement said. Yet another vehicle approached, shots rang out from it, and the soldiers fired back.

In all, six "aggressors" were killed, the statement said. The statement did not detail who died and did not mention the age of any of the fatalities.

The Nasiriyah attack Wednesday was one in a series against non-U.S. targets apparently designed to discourage international cooperation with the United States.

In the past few months, insurgents have attacked the U.N. headquarters in Iraq, the International Red Cross, the Turkish and Jordanian embassies and most recently, a Polish officer stationed here as part of the U.S. led coalition.

The Italians participate in a British-led security force in southern Iraq. Italian participation sparked considerable domestic opposition, just as Britain's role has weakened the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Within hours of the blast, the Italian opposition was calling for the withdrawal of its troop contingent.

"They were sent to an Iraq in flames because the government wanted to do a favor for the Bush administration without taking risks into consideration," said Pietro Folena of the main opposition party, the Democrats of the Left. "Now the Italian soldiers must come home. It is the only right thing to do at this moment." Members of other opposition parties made similar demands.

In Rome, Prime Minister Berlusconi said Italy would not be intimidated.

"No intimidation will budge us from our willingness to help that country rise up again and rebuild itself with self-government, security and freedom," he said in a statement.

"I express my firmest condemnation of this new act of violence that, added with other cruel gestures carried out in that tormented country, does not help pacification or renewal," Pope John Paul II said in a message to Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Barbash and Branigin reported from Washington