BAGHDAD,
February 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least 11 Iraqis
were killed and 58 occupation forces soldiers wounded in twin attacks
on a military base in southern Iraq on Wednesday, February 18.
A
spokesman for Polish-led forces in Hilla, about 100 km (60 miles)
south of Baghdad, said 44 Iraqis were also wounded in the blasts, and
that the wounds of the soldiers were not life-threatening.
A
U.S. spokeswoman said the dead included women and children and the
toll was expected to rise as bodies were pulled out of damaged
buildings.
“We
can confirm that more than 11 Iraqis were killed,” Hillary White
said.
Non-U.S.
soldiers are deemed by many ordinary Iraqis as collaborating with the
American forces, and they had come under several attacks since
deployment to the country.
The
blasts blew the facing and roofs off of homes outside the base.
Mohammed
Al-Tai, director of Hilla's Al-Talimi hospital said “seven dead --
four men, two women and a 12-year-old girl, plus 28 wounded -- all of
them Iraqis,” were received.
In
Warsaw, military spokesman Colonel Zdzislaw Gnatowski said Mongolian
soldiers opened fire on the trucks as they hurtled toward the base.
In
Budapest, defense ministry spokesman Peter Matyuc said the explosions
sent shrapnel flying, shattering the windows of the Hungarians'
barracks.
Poland
has 2,400 troops in Iraq and commands a division of 9,000 men,
including 300 Hungarians, mostly logistics experts, as part of the
U.S.-led forces occupying the country.
The
Hilla attack came a week after two vehicle bombings - against an Iraqi
police station in Iskandariya and an army recruiting centre in
Baghdad, which killed about 100 Iraqis.
A
Polish officer was killed in an attack in Iraq last November.
In
the same month, a truck bomber killed 19 Italians and 13 Iraqis in an
attack against an Italian police camp in the southern city of
Nasiriya. It was the worst attack on a U.S. ally since the occupation
began.
More
Iraqi Casualties
In
the meantime, three Iraqi civilians were killed, one of them a 10-year
girl, when a stray U.S. mortar round slammed into the backyard of a
home near the main U.S. base in Tikrit on Tuesday, February 17.
U.S.
commanders describe the firings as a “harassment and interdiction”
mission aimed at preventing resistance fighters from setting up firing
positions in meadows across the river to attack the clifftop palace.
“No
details are yet available as to how or why the missile went astray,”
a U.S. soldier said.
The
attacks help increase anti-American sentiments among local
inhabitants, jeered by the U.S. military aggressions that include mass
detentions and random shootings.
