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Huge US tank toppled in Iraq
30/10/2003 09:58 - (SA)
Baghdad - In a spectacular assault on US forces, an M1A2 Abrams tank was disabled by a roadside explosion that left two crew members dead and a third wounded, a US military officials in Washington said.
"Two soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were killed and one was wounded when their tank hit an unidentified explosive device," the US military said in a statement.
Their deaths bring the total of US troop losses to 116 since May 1 - the day the US president declared the war won - two more than were killed in the original invasion.
Military officials in Washington and Baghdad said it was the first time the army's main battle tank had been disabled by a roadside explosion since Iraqi opposition forces began targeting US convoys and patrols with so-called improvised explosive devices.
The force of the blast caused the behemoth to roll over an embankment, which is what killed and injured its occupants, an official said.
The latest model of the 69.5-ton tank, the M1A2 SEP, is armed with a 120mm main cannon and is "the most heavily equipped, and heavily armoured main battle tank that the US has ever put out in the field," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.Org, a private research group.
That does not bode well for the future
"If it is true that a tank was damaged to this sort of extent resulting in fatalities by a simple roadside bomb, depending on whatever size it was, that does not bode well for the future of the occupation," he said.
"That really does prove there is no safe place for American soldiers," he said.
Elsewhere in Iraq, two mortar rounds were fired on a hospital regularly visited by US forces in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk late Wednesday.
A US defence official in Washington said a former Iraqi general, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, is believed to be co-ordinating attacks in Iraq by foreign fighters and Iraqi regime loyalists.
The reports fingering al-Douri as the co-ordinator of the attacks probably came from the recent capture in Mosul of a former secretary of al-Douri and two senior members of Ansar al-Islam, the official said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday blamed "evil people" who do not want to see "a strong and prosperous Iraq".
"We will continue to do everything we can to thwart them and reconstruct the country," Blair pledged.
Senior military and intelligence officers said they thought it was likely an elite cadre of between 200 and 400 foreign militants were importing suicide bombers from neighbouring Arab countries to carry out the attacks.
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