Insurgent Suicide Bomber Kills Five U.S. Soldiers, 7 Iraqi Guards

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BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents stepped up attacks on Iraq’s fledgling security forces, killing seven Iraqi police and guardsmen yesterday in a suicide bombing hours after storming a police station north of the capital. The military reported five new American deaths.


Thirteen Marines were wounded yesterday in a mortar attack south of Baghdad, the military said. No further details were released.


Yesterday’s suicide attack occurred in Baghdad, a Euphrates River town about 120 miles northwest of the capital, where a driver detonated his vehicle near a police checkpoint, police Lieutenant Mohammed al-Fehdawi said. A hospital official, Hatim Ahmed, confirmed seven police and Iraqi National Guard members were killed and nine were wounded.


Late Sunday, gunmen stormed a police station west of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, looted the armory, commandeered several police cars, and fled after encountering no resistance, Iraqi officials said. American troops went to the police station early yesterday and arrested two dozen people, police said. American officials had no comment. American and Iraqi troops recaptured Samarra from insurgents in September, but the city remains tense.


Two American soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed and three wounded yesterday in a roadside bomb explosion in northwestern Baghdad, the American command said. One American soldier died and two were injured in a vehicle accident 30 miles northwest of the town of Kut in eastern Iraq, the military said.


In addition, two American Marines were killed in a weekend bombing south of the capital, an American official said yesterday. American, British, and Iraqi forces have been sweeping through the area to clear Sunni insurgents from a string of towns and cities between Baghdad and the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.


Attacks have increased against American, Iraqi, and other targets on the road leading from the center of Baghdad to the city’s international airport, located on the western outskirts of the capital.


The British embassy announced yesterday that its staff would no longer be permitted to travel on the airport road, which the American State Department has identified as one of the most dangerous routes in Iraq.


“We advise against all but essential travel to Iraq,” the British embassy said in a statement. “We urge all British nationals in Iraq to consider whether their presence in Iraq is essential at this time. Even essential travel to Iraq should be delayed, if possible.”


South of the capital, American, British, and Iraqi forces pressed an offensive aimed at clearing insurgents from an area known as the “triangle of death.” Two Marines were killed there Sunday, American officials said, and British troops escaped serious injury yesterday when a bomb exploded next to a Scimitar light tank from the Queen’s Dragoon Guards.


The offensive, called Operation Plymouth Rock, was launched in part as a follow-up to this month’s assault on Fallujah, the main insurgent bastion 40 miles west of Baghdad.


American commanders want to cut off an escape route for Fallujah fighters and pacify the area so that national elections can be held January 30. Sunni Muslim clerics have called for an election boycott, and leading Sunni politicians urged that the vote be postponed. Leaders from the majority Shiite community have demanded the elections go ahead as scheduled.


In Mosul, however, the top American commander told the British Broadcasting Corp. that elections could not be held in all parts of the city, Iraq’s third largest, under current security conditions. But Brigadier General Carter Ham said there was still time to get the situation under control.


In Geneva, the international Red Cross said Iraq’s Red Crescent had set up a relief center in Fallujah to aid civilians, but doctors and nurses have been unable to treat the wounded because of continued fighting between American-led forces and insurgents.


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