BAGHDAD, March 7 -- Insurgents attacked Iraqi troops and police in areas north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 15 people in two assaults that included the bombing of an Iraqi army officer's house, officials said.
The officer, Maj. Mohammed Jasim, said he was driving up to his house in Balad, about 50 miles north of the capital, to eat breakfast with his family after spending the night at a military base when people on the street hollered that his house had been bombed. He found a chaotic scene, with debris littering the street, five people dead and 26 wounded, including his wife and three children.
Iraqi children play near a truck that was attacked in Mosul while taking supplies to a U.S. base.
(AP)
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Iraq War Deaths
Total number of U.S. military deaths and names of the U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war as announced by the Pentagon yesterday:
1,499 Fatalities
In hostile actions: 1,145
In non-hostile actions: 354
Staff Sgt. Juan M. Solorio, 32, of Dallas; 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. Killed March 4 in Mosul.
Sgt. First Class Michael D. Jones, 43, of Unity, Maine.; Army National Guard 133rd Engineer Battalion, based at Belfast, Maine. Died March 3 in Syracuse, N.Y., of a noncombat-related illness just after returning from Iraq.
All troops were killed in action unless otherwise indicated.
Total fatalities include four civilian employees of the Defense Department.
A full list of casualties is available online at www.washingtonpost.com/nation
SOURCE: Defense Department's www.defenselink.mil/newsThe Washington Post
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Many of the injured reportedly were children gathered outside two nearby schools.
"I believe the insurgents I hunt targeted my home," Jasim, who commands Battalion 203 of the Iraqi National Guard, said in an interview. "They all know I've captured most of the terrorists and Baathists in this area," he said, referring to members of the outlawed political party of ousted president Saddam Hussein.
Two Sudanese men were arrested near the scene after neighbors pointed them out and said they were strangers, said a Balad police official, Harith Numan.
Meanwhile, Bulgarian officials said a Bulgarian soldier apparently was killed by U.S. forces in a friendly-fire incident on Friday, the same day that U.S. troops fired on a car carrying Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, injuring her and killing an Italian military intelligence agent who had played a central role in winning her release from kidnappers.
"Someone started shooting at our patrol from the west, and in the same direction, 150 meters away, there was a unit from the U.S. Army," Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov said during a news conference in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. "The result gives us enough grounds to believe the death of rifleman Gurdi Gurdev was caused by friendly fire."
Monday's attacks were part of a series of stepped-up assaults by insurgents against Iraqi security forces since elections on Jan. 30. Hundreds of people have been killed in the attacks, increasing pressure on political parties to form a government, political analysts say, but also complicating that task by raising political, ethnic and religious tensions.
In the other major attack Monday, in Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, at least 10 people were killed in what appeared to be a coordinated assault on an army checkpoint south of the city and on the security forces who responded, officials said.
The 7:30 a.m. attack began when about eight cars stopped at the checkpoint in the village of Muradiyah, at the southern entrance to Baqubah. At least 50 men, most in ski masks, leapt from the cars and opened fire at soldiers manning the post, Faisal Kadhim, a soldier who was injured in the clash, said while being treated at a local hospital.
After the attackers escaped, officials said, police and emergency personnel began transporting the injured to hospitals. About two miles north of the checkpoint, they said, a car exploded as the vehicles passed by. They said the explosion, which might have been the act of a suicide bomber, apparently was timed to go off as the people injured in the first attack were being evacuated.
A group associated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, the reputed head of al Qaeda in Iraq, asserted responsibility for the killings in a statement posted on an Internet site, the Reuters news agency reported.
"The mujaheddin ambushed a unit of the apostate guards in Baqubah," the statement said, "and a brave lion carried out an attack on the riffraff and turned them into scattered fragments."
Tariq Ahmed, a spokesman at Baqubah Hospital, said six soldiers, two policemen and two civilians were killed in the incident, and 23 people were wounded.
Special correspondents Salih Saif Aldin in Balad and Hasan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.
