US deaths in Iraq top 9/11

2006-12-26 09:04

Baghdad - The US military death toll in Iraq has reached 2 974, one more than the number of deaths in the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States, according to an Associated Press count on Tuesday.

The US military announced the deaths of two soldiers in a bomb explosion southwest of Baghdad on Monday.

The deaths raised the number of troops killed to 2 974 since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. The Sept 11 attacks claimed 2 973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

"The joint patrol was conducting security operations in order to stop terrorists from placing roadside bombs in the area," the military said in a statement on the latest deaths. "As they conducted their mission, a roadside bomb exploded near one of their vehicles."

Another soldier was wounded in the explosion, the military said.

On Monday, British soldiers backed by tanks raided a police station in the southern city of Basra, killing seven gunmen in an effort to stop renegade Iraqi officers from executing their prisoners, the British military said.

After the British stormed the Basra police station, they removed the prisoners, who showed evidence of torture, then evacuated the building before blowing it up.

The operation showed how closely aligned some police units are with militias and death squads - and the challenges coalition forces face as they transfer authority for security to Iraqis.

In Baghdad, police found 40 bodies, apparent victims of sectarian violence. A car bomb exploded beside a market and a suicide bomber struck a bus in separate attacks that killed 14 civilians and wounded at least 33.

In the Basra raid, the British set out to arrest officers with the station's serious crimes unit who were suspected of involvement with Shiite death squads. Seven members of the rogue police unit were apprehended three days ago in other raids, said a British spokesperson, Royal Navy Lt Jenny Saleh.

"We had intelligence to indicate that the serious crimes unit would execute its prisoners in the coming days, so we decided to intervene," Saleh said.

British troops were fired on as they approached the station and their return fire killed seven gunmen, said Maj Charlie Burbridge, another British military spokesperson.

British and Iraqi forces transferred all 76 prisoners at the station to another facility in downtown Basra, he said. Some prisoners had "classic torture injuries" such as crushed hands and feet, cigarette and electrical burns and gunshot wounds in the knees, Burbridge said.

Tribal and political feuds

The British demolished the building in an effort to disband the unit. "We identified the serious crimes unit as, frankly, too far gone," Burbridge said. "We just had to get rid of it."

The unit's members, he alleged, were involved in tribal and political feuds in southern Iraq, which is mostly Shiite. They were not, he said, engaged in the kind of sectarian reprisal killings that have terrorised mixed neighbourhoods of Baghdad.

Most of Britain's 7 200 troops in Iraq are based in the Basra area.

Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesperson for Iraq's Defence Ministry, said the operation was coordinated with the Iraqi government. "Multinational forces got approval for this raid from this ministry and with participation of the Iraqi army," he said.

US Army Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training Iraqi forces, said in Washington last week that efforts were under way to weed out Iraqi national police believed to be sympathetic to the militias.

Up to a quarter are thought to be aligned with the militias, which are engaged in sectarian violence.

The establishment of a viable Iraqi police force is vital to the US-led coalition's goal of handing responsibility for security to Iraqis, so foreign troops can return home.

Suicide bomber

In another sign of lawlessness in Basra, gunmen on Monday robbed $740 000 (R5.2m) from a bank about 800 metres from the raided police station.

The car bomb in Baghdad, meanwhile, struck a mostly Shi'ite district to the east that attracts crowds of shoppers and laborers looking for work.

In another part of eastern Baghdad, a suicide bomber exploded in a minibus, killing three people and injuring 19, police said.

Another suicide bomber killed two policemen at a checkpoint at a university entrance in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni-dominated insurgency.

The deaths came a day after Iraq's interior minister said attacks targeting police had killed some 12 000 officers since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein.

- AP