Car bomb kills 3 soldiers

2004-10-25 21:40

Baghdad - A car bomb tore through an Australian army patrol on Monday in an attack close to the country's embassy in Baghdad has left three Iraqis dead and 16 people wounded, including three Australian soldiers.

A mushroom cloud hung over the site of the early morning blast as elsewhere in the capital three roadside bombs exploded in the path of US convoys, leaving one American soldier dead.

The United States has borne the brunt of the violence that flared following last year's war to topple Saddam Hussein, but other coalition members have also paid a price, with a truck bomb killing a Bulgarian soldier and wounding three others in Iraq on Sunday.

An Australian defence spokesperson described the latest bombing as the first direct attack on vehicles of Australia, which has 850 troops in the country.

"A security detachment patrol of armoured vehicles was engaged by an improvised explosive device that was hidden in a vehicle," Brigadier Mike Hannan told Australian national radio.

The invasion of Iraq

Canberra along with London and Washington are the founding members of the coalition that led the invasion of Iraq last year.

"We know that two of the three Australian vehicles were damaged and three of our people suffered non life-threatening injuries," said Hannan, adding that the most serious of these were facial wounds.

The convoy was on a normal patrol near the embassy and was tasked largely with protecting diplomatic staff, the spokesperson said, although no staff were in the convoy at the time.

Citing witnesses, a US military official at the scene said attackers used a remote control device to detonate a bomb inside a white vehicle as the Australian soldiers drove past.

Local hospitals said 13 Iraqi civilians, including four young children aged between four and eight, had been brought in with injuries, while ambulances were seen rushing to and from the blast site, ferrying away casualties.

Local gatherings

In an all-too common scene of chaos, US soldiers cordoned off the area, where hundreds of local people had gathered to try to glimpse what was going on.

"Warning, warning!" US soldiers shouted through a loudspeaker. "A criminal group has blown up a suicide car bomb against the multi-national forces causing civilian casualties, please go back there might be secondary explosives."

An AFP reporter at the site saw a damaged army vehicle, with its tyres flattened by the force of the blast that rocked the Karrada district at about 8:00am close to a school and a bridge leading to the heavily guarded Green Zone that houses Iraqi government buildings and foreign embassies.

The US official, Major Scot Stanger, said no diplomats had been travelling in the convoy.

"It was only a military convoy trying to get to checkpoint 11 near the bridge," Stanger said, referring to a southern entrance to the Green Zone.

- SAPA