A suicide car bomber struck a United States military outpost north of Baghdad, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20 others, in the deadliest attack on American ground forces in Iraq in 16 months.
In an attack claimed by al-Qaeda, the bomb exploded against a patrol base in the restive province of Diyala on Monday and brought the US military death toll for April so far to 70, according to the military.
The attack was the bloodiest assault on US troops on the ground since December 1 2005 when 10 US marines were killed and 11 wounded by a roadside bomb outside Fallujah in western Iraq.
On January 20 this year, 12 US personnel were killed when their Blackhawk helicopter was downed by heavy machine-gun fire in Diyala.
Diyala province has emerged as one of the fiercest battlegrounds in Iraq, the new focus of Sunni al-Qaeda fighters who were pushed out of western Iraq and Baghdad by large-scale US and Iraqi security operations.
The US military has sent reinforcements to the area as part of a strategy to pacify the violent belt around Baghdad, which houses insurgent rear bases and car-bomb factories used to prepare attacks on Iraqi civilians.
Another US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the Diyala town of Muqdadiyah on the same day, according to his command.
The latest fatalities took the American military’s losses in Iraq to 3 330 since their March 2003 invasion, according to an Agence France-Press count based on Pentagon figures.
A coalition of Sunni insurgent groups led by al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed it was behind the attack on the Diyala patrol base.
”Two knights from the martyrdom-seeking brigade of the Islamic State of Iraq plunged their booby-trapped trucks on Monday into the US crusader outpost in … Diyala,” said a statement by the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq.
The message was released on the internet and its authenticity could not be confirmed.
As US losses mounted, insurgents continued to carry out bomb attacks.
One person was killed and two others were wounded when a bomb hidden in a locker at a Baghdad dentistry college affiliated to the renowned Mustanisiriyah University exploded, security officials said.
Mustanisiriyah University itself has been targeted regularly by extremists.
The target of Tuesday’s attack appeared to be Fadi Karim Wahid, son of Electricity Ministir Karim Wahid, as the bomb was planted in his locker, a security official said. Fadi was one of the two people wounded.
Meanwhile, in an apparently coordinated attack, two roadside bombs exploded in east Baghdad’s Palestine Street, killing one person and wounding two others.
Two more car bombs exploded in a Baghdad parking lot outside the Iranian embassy, one day after two detonated in the same place. Police at the scene said no-one was hurt but several civilian vehicles were damaged.
Iraqi and US forces also carried out a series of raids over the past 24 hours. The Iraqi Defence Ministry said its forces killed seven ”terrorists” and arrested 75 suspected militants. — AFP
