Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Iraq

Bomb kills five Marines

Roadside bombs continue to be deadly for Americans, killing at least 37 since late April.

BAGHDAD - Militants killed five U.S. Marines and authorities found 21 bodies Friday near the Syrian border, where American and Iraqi troops bore down in two recent operations aimed at a tenacious insurgency.

The Marines were killed Thursday in a roadside bombing while conducting combat operations near the Sunni town of Haqlaniyah, 90 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

That brought to at least 1,689 the number of U.S. military members killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

At least 37 U.S. military members have been killed by roadside bombs since the makeup of Iraq's new government was announced April 28, according to the AP count.

The 21 victims found near the border, thought to be missing Iraqi soldiers, were shot repeatedly in the head and found blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs. Three were beheaded.

The bodies were found near Qaim, 80 miles west of Haqlaniyah, along a highway that meanders along the Euphrates River and into Syria. The bodies were in three locations, haphazardly dumped by the roadside in a gravel pit and in sand flats.

The killings were a clear sign of the difficulties faced by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Anbar province around the lawless frontier town of Qaim, and their inability to seal the desert border with Syria despite major efforts to boost their military presence.

U.S. military intelligence officials believe the Qaim area sits at the crossroads of a major route used by groups such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq to smuggle foreign fighters into the country.

The bodies were thought to be those of off-duty Iraqi soldiers who left their base near Qaim two days earlier in civilian clothes, headed to Baghdad for a vacation.

Marines carried out two major operations in the area last month, killing 125 insurgents in Operation Matador and 14 in Operation New Market.

Eleven Marines were killed in the actions, designed to eradicate insurgents using the road from Damascus to Baghdad.

As part of its effort to increase its presence, the Iraqi army boosted the number of soldiers at the frontier post of Akashat, near Qaim, from about 100 before Operation Matador to nearly 750 now. Akashat is where the missing soldiers were based.

Intelligence officials say foreigners get rigorous religious indoctrination before being sent on suicide missions.

Also Friday, a car bomb killed four men and wounded nine as they sat outside a restaurant in Baghdad waiting to pick up sandwiches.

The bloodshed came as politicians seeking a negotiated solution to the insurgency wrangled over a promise to give Sunni Arabs a bigger say in charting Iraq's future.

Also Friday, gunmen killed Col. Abdul-Karim al-Daraji, the dean of the police academy in the southern city of Basra, and an Iraqi soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the central city of Mashru.

In Kirkuk, attackers blocked a car carrying two officers from a counterterrorism bureau, Col. Ghanim Jabbar Abdullah and Maj. Rahem Othman Saied, and opened fire, killing them.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed in an Internet posting that it abducted 36 Iraqi soldiers in western Iraq on Wednesday, and threatened to kill them unless the government released "Muslim women" from prison.

In Baghdad, Iraqi politicians were divided over Talabani's promise to give Sunni Arabs more seats on a 55-member committee drafting Iraq's first postwar constitution.

The charter must be ready to present to the 275-seat National Assembly by mid August and will go before Iraq's voters in a referendum two months later.

It requires the support of Sunni Arabs - thought to make up 20 percent of the population.

Talabani's promise to raise the Sunni Arab representatives from a proposed 15 to 25 - increasing the committee's size to 80 - averted a crisis after Sunni Arabs threatened a boycott.

They renewed that threat Friday if the Shiites and Kurds backed down from the promise.

"We drew a red line and said "do not choose less than 25.' We didn't discuss this issue with Mr. Talabani and we do consider Talabani's announcement to be official approval," said Yousif al-Aadhami of the Sunni Endowment, a charitable institution.

"These seats are not given to us as charity," he added. "This is what we deserve."

[Last modified June 11, 2005, 00:26:12]