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BAGHDAD, Aug 7: Iraqi guerilla fighters fought a furious street battle with the US forces at a major shopping avenue in Baghdad that left one Iraqi dead and three US soldiers wounded.
The US army said that in an earlier gunbattle in central Baghdad, on Wednesday night, guerillas killed two American soldiers and wounded another soldier, along with an Iraqi interpreter. The deaths brought to 55 the number of US troops killed in hostile action since May 1.
Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, a car bomb killed 11 people and wounded 57 when it exploded outside the Jordanian embassy, causing rage and panic in the bloodiest attack since Saddam Hussein was toppled four months ago.
Thursday’s gunbattle, in the heart of the city where US soldiers regularly buy appliances, and the blistering shootout that ensued, marked a clear escalation in the low-level war between the Americans and loyalists of ousted president Saddam Hussein.
Generally, the shadowy fighters detonate their bombs or fire their rocket-propelled grenades and run, but in this instance, they stayed and sprayed fire on US troops.
Two soldiers from the First Armoured Division had just climbed back into their all-terrain Humvee, parked on a divider in the middle of Karada street when a bomb exploded, leaving their vehicle in flames, said Major John Frisbie and witnesses.
Within five minutes, US soldiers on the street came under fire from the top floors of a three-storey building where the men had been shopping, and the two sides traded fire, Major Frisbie said.
One Iraqi bystander was mowed down on the street, an eyewitness said.
The soldiers had fired in the man’s direction, after hearing a shot, other witnesses said.
People stood over the body screaming, blood forming a puddle behind his head, while the dying man rolled his eyes and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
A US soldier said they suspected the man may have been one of the assailants and the crowd confiscated his gun — which the military says is a trend in the vicious fight pitting Saddam loyalists against US soldiers.
A gunbattle then raged intermittently, the crackle of Kalashnikovs trading with booming US guns. The exchange prevented a US military helicopter buzzing overhead from landing and picking up wounded.
A local grocer said had he heard an explosion and ran out of his shop to see a Humvee in flames. Afterwards, he said he saw people carrying a US soldier who had lost his legs in an explosion.
People caught in the crossfire were seen hiding behind white refrigerators and other appliances put out for sale on the avenue’s bustling sidewalk.
The three-storey building, where the guerillas holed up, caught fire during the fighting, and a US soldier was seen escorting men and children away from the structure as smoke billowed out. The army started to spray jets of water on the flaming yellow-brick building.
Shortly afterwards, several additional military vehicles rumbled down the street, including Bradley fighting vehicles and hard-back Humvees to provide support to the 10-vehicle force already engaged in the firefight. A combat helicopter sliced through the sky.
After almost an hour of fighting, the US army managed to catch two suspected fighters from the building, Major Frisbie said.
He added an improvised explosive device had been found in the very same city block one week before.
“You’re standing in a war zone,” he said, surveying the bullet-pocked and charred three-storey building that had been home to electronics and television shops, as well as a men’s hair salon, before Thursday’s blast.
The explosion had gutted life on the street, leaving a vendor wounded in the leg. His cart was blackened and pieces of burnt bread were abandoned on its counter.
A Toyota with a new 25-inch television in the back and its windows shattered stood empty by a smoking metal heap.
Store owners denied anyone had fired from their building, despite clear evidence to the contrary of a booming gunbattle.
Interpreters using loudspeakers demanded information about the men who attacked the Americans, and soldiers handed out posters to children of masked gunmen that urged Iraqis to turn the fighters in.“My store is riddled with 4,000 bullets,” said Qassam al-Zubaidi, 31, whose television shop was where the two soldiers had been shopping before heading back to their car. “The Americans owe me 30,000 dollars.”
EMBASSY BLAST: After the blast at the Jordanian embassy, bodies __ bandaged and caked in blood __ were hauled out of ambulances on stretchers after the blast outside the Jordanian embassy and carried to a nearby children’s hospital, amid the sound of wailing sirens and women shrieking.
Ahmad Kadun, in charge of the hospital’s morgue, said the facility had received 11 bodies from the attack, two of which had been rapidly claimed by relatives for burial.
He said the hospital had treated 40 wounded, two of them in a serious condition.
A doctor at Baghdad’s Yarmuk hospital said it had admitted 17 injured patients, six of them in serious condition.
A medical source said three Jordanian embassy employees had been transferred from the children’s hospital to a Jordanian-run hospital at Fallujah, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell phoned his Jordanian counterpart and pledged to beef up security around the embassy, a Jordanian foreign ministry source said. condition.
Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, US commander in Iraq, said that in terms of casualties it was the worst attack on a non-military target since the end of major combat.
“This shows that we have some professional terrorists who are operating in this country and that we’re still in a combat zone,” he told a news conference.
In Amman, Jordanian officials denied that any Jordanians had been killed. They said 15 people employed at the embassy had been hurt, but did not specify how many were Jordanian.
Charge d’affaires Demi Haddad was not in the embassy at the time of the attack, an official said.
Jordanian officials condemned the explosion, which was not immediately claimed, as a cowardly act of terrorism.
“Jordan condemns this criminal, cowardly terrorist operation,” Information Minister Nabil Sharif said in a statement carried by Petra news agency.
The attack will, however, “reinforce Jordan’s determination to help the Iraqi people achieve security and stability in Iraq”, Mr Sharif added.
Leaving the hospital, his head bandaged, police official Hekmat Ibrahim said: “I saw a long vehicle approach the embassy. I heard a huge explosion. I was blown back and I fell unconscious.”
Mr Ibrahim, a guard at the embassy, said 16 police were assigned to the Jordanian and nearby Tunisian embassies.
Lt Col Eric Nantz of the US army’s 82nd Airborne Division told reporters beside the scorched embassy walls that the attack “appeared to be a car bomb”.
“What I know is a lot of Iraqis were killed,” he added.
At least four vehicles were destroyed by the explosion, and an eyewitness saw crowds extricating four blackened bodies from one of them.
A hole was blasted in part of the embassy’s exterior wall and a guard post blown over.
ANGRY CROWD: Following the explosion, an angry crowd of Iraqis charged into the embassy and started to tear the Jordanian flag and rip up and burn pictures of Jordan’s King Abdullah and his father, the late King Hussein.
The crowd yelled curses against Jordan and Jordanians, saying “we want to kill them all”.
When US troops and Iraqi police arrived, about 30 minutes after the explosion, the crowd was forced out amid shouting.
But once back on the street, the crowd spotted a Jordanian embassy employee and started hurling rocks at him.
Police escorted the employee to safety and US soldiers fired a warning shot, forcing the mob to disperse, and then proceeded to cordon off the area with tanks.
Thursday’s blast came a week after Jordan granted asylum to Saddam Hussein’s elder daughters, angering some Iraqis. Supporters of Saddam are also irate with Amman for cooperating with Washington during the war.
Militants have scores to settle with Jordanian security services too for helping their Western and Saudi counterparts pursue the Al Qaeda network.
No group has claimed responsibility for the explosion.
Embassy employee Ansar Abu Ghazaleh said the Jordanians had been afraid of an attack but suggested another reason.—AFP/Reuters
