U.S. forces in Iraq take fire daily

BAGHDAD, August 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As U.S. President George W. Bush called for more foreign troops to be deployed in Iraq, violence continued in the war-battered country as twelve former Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ammunition dump blast and another U.S. soldier slain in an explosion late Monday, August 18.

"Twelve people were killed in the explosion and they were all unemployed men who had been officers in the army," said Kazem Hassan, 32, a former tank regiment sergeant now living in the village of Hammad Shehab, some 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad.

While the U.S. military confirmed the incident, it said only one body had been discovered in the ashes.

"A team of investigators recovered the remains of one unidentified body," said Colonel Bill MacDonald, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, which controls northern Iraq.

MacDonald was quoted by Agence France-Presse He added that no US troops or equipment were lost in the explosion.

U.S. troops kept the Iraqi police and firefighters away from the scene until 11:00 am (0700 GMT) Monday once the fires and chain-reaction ammunition explosions had subsided, MacDonald said.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel said the men had broken into the dump to loot copper from artillery and other shells which they would then resell.

"The men here are unemployed and the Americans shoot at them when they go near the dump but they go anyway because they need money," said villager Milad Ali Hussein.

On May 23, U.S. civil administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer announced the dissolution of the Iraqi army forces, other security structures of the ousted regime and the information ministry, an order that left more than one million people jobless in the 25 million-populated country.

In May, more than 5,000 Iraqi army officers and personnel staged a demonstration protesting Bremer’s decision, as attacks against U.S. forces have continued amidst anti-American sentiments among many of the Iraqis jeering for an end to occupation and return to their work.

MacDonald said the site is now being used as a store for weapons and ammunition confiscated from Iraqi resistance fighters.

A similar arms dump explosion killed at least 25 people in late June near the northwestern town of Haditha.

Fresh American Casualty

In the meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed by an explosive device in Baghdad Monday, the U.S. military said.

"A 1st Armored Division soldier was killed by an explosive device on August 18," U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

"The incident took place in the Karradah district (of the Iraqi capital) at 2:00 pm (1000 GMT). The soldier was medically evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 3:15 pm (1115 GMT)," it said.

The statement did not give details about the circumstances of the explosion.

Prior to the latest death, the U.S. army had put at 60 the number of American troops killed in guerrilla-style attacks since U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over on May 1.

Another 62 American soldiers have died in non-combat incidents in Iraq since that date.

U.S. military sources said that there are more than 10 attacks each day on U.S. soldiers, which have been blamed on fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein and foreign militants, the BBC NewsOnline reported.

But a number of self-claimed Iraqi resistance groups claiming no links to Saddam said they had carried out the attacks against the occupation forces in an effort to drive them out of the oil-rich country.

Reuters Cameraman Back Home

"This fall, you'll see a lot of protective role being taken off the shoulders of U.S. troops," Bush

The killing came as Reuters news agency confirmed the body of its cameraman shot by U.S. troops in Baghdad Sunday had been flown out of the country to be buried in the West Bank.

Mazen Dana was shot while filming outside the notorious Abu Gharib prison on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital just a day before he was to go home.

A witness said the award-winning Dana, 43, was shot in the chest on Sunday afternoon by military personnel aboard a U.S. tank, part of a convoy of American military vehicles approaching the prison.

Reuters said Dana was not supposed to have been on the story but had offered to go to aid a newly arrived colleague.

His body was flown to Kuwait on Monday and was expected to be transferred to the Jordanian capital of Amman to be collected by his family.

From there his body would be taken to Hebron, in the West Bank, where his family lives.

In eastern Baghdad, meanwhile, water supplies were running again through a mains pipe believed attacked Sunday by saboteurs, although it was unclear if the 300,000 homes affected were again receiving running water.

Bremer blamed Saddam loyalists for the spate of recent attacks on civilian and military facilities seen as aimed at causing havoc and sewing discontent against occupying forces.

"These are probably people left over from the old regime who are simply fighting a rearguard action by attacking Iraqi assets," Bremer said in an interview with CNN.

The White House also blamed remnants of Saddam's regime for the sabotage attacks, but also lumped in "foreign terrorists," and vowed that U.S. forces would wipe out the culprits.

"We are on the offensive. We are going after those remnants of the former regime, we are going after those foreign terrorists," spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "They will be defeated."

‘Protective Load’

But as the situation remains far from normalcy in Iraq, President George W. Bush said that fresh foreign troop deployments will ease the U.S. military burden in Iraq in the coming months.

"This fall you'll see a lot of protective load, kind of the guarding role being taken off the shoulders of US troops and shared by coalition forces," he told Armed Forces Radio and Television Service on August 14.

Amid worries that U.S. forces are stretched thin by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush noted that British forces were still in Iraq and predicted that "a major Polish contingent" would enter Iraq by September 4.

"There will be other nations going in to support not only the Polish contingent, but the British contingent," Bush said in the interview, which was held on a military base in San Diego, California.

Despite a spate of deadly attacks on US forces and recent sabotage strikes on key water and oil targets, Bush said Iraq has been "certainly getting better on a day-by-day basis" since the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

"The reason why is because we're routing out former Baathists and some foreign terrorists," whom Washington blames for post-war violence, he said.