With U.S. Marines poised to attack Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah, American warplanes pounded targets in the rebel-held city west of Baghdad today, and Iraqi security forces came under attack in a series of deadly car bombings and assaults in the city of Samarra.
At least 23 U.S. troops were reported wounded in separate attacks in Baghdad and the western town of Ramadi.
There were conflicting accounts of the death toll in Samarra, with news agencies reporting between 21 and 34 Iraqis killed, most of them members of police or other security forces.
In an attack near Ramadi about 70 miles west of Baghdad, 20 U.S. Marines were wounded when their convoy was hit by a suspected car bomb blast. Clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents in Ramadi left at least one Iraqi dead and 14 wounded, news agencies reported.
In the capital, a car bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy on the main airport road in the western part of the city, killing an Iraqi civilian bystander and wounding three U.S. soldiers, the military said in a statement. It said another Iraqi bystander was seriously wounded by what it called a "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device" that detonated as the convoy was passing at about 2:40 p.m.
Television news footage showed U.S. soldiers gathered around the smoldering wreckage of what appeared to be a Humvee after the blast, Reuters news agency reported.
The violence came as an estimated 10,000 U.S. troops massed for an expected assault against rebels in Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim town 35 miles west of Baghdad that U.S. officials say has become a haven for Iraqi and foreign insurgents, possibly including a group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.
As U.S. forces prepared for the offensive, warplanes dropped 500-pound bombs on several targets in the city early today. U.S. authorities identified the targets as a factory and suspected weapons caches. Residents claimed that a small Saudi-funded hospital and a warehouse for medical supplies were hit, along with dozens of houses.
In a statement, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force said Marine and U.S. Air Force aircraft carried out "precision" strikes on targets in Fallujah Friday and early today, destroying three barricaded fighting positions, an anti-aircraft weapon, a munitions cache and a "building known to have anti-aircraft capabilities."
In Samarra, as many as four Iraqi police stations were hit by a series of insurgent attacks. There were conflicting accounts of the number of casualties. According to police quoted by Reuters, up to 34 people were killed and 43 were wounded. The agency said 23 of the dead and 28 of the wounded were members of Iraqi security forces.
At least one police station was reported rammed by a suicide car bomber.
According to the Associated Press, 21 people were killed and 22 wounded in the Samarra attacks. The agency said 12 Iraqi police were killed when armed insurgents stormed a police station in the city. It said that in addition to that attack, two car bombs detonated, one of them near a U.S. base, and a mortar fell on a crowded market. The dead included an Iraqi National Guard Commander, Abdel Razeq Shaker Garmali, and the city's mayor was reportedly among the wounded, AP reported.
U.S. forces imposed a curfew on Samarra, which had been the scene of heavy fighting in September between insurgents and combined U.S. and Iraqi government forces. The Iraqi interim government claimed to have retaken control of the city after those clashes.
Elsewhere, the Iraqi security chief in Kufa was wounded when a roadside bomb detonated as his convoy was passing through the Shiite Muslim town of about 90 miles south of Baghdad. Kufa and neighboring Najaf were rocked by clashes during the summer between U.S.-led forces and militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
In Baqubah, unknown gunmen today assassinated a former intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army, Reuters reported. Gunmen in four cars stopped Lt. Col. Abdel Sattar Luhaybi on a street in the town 40 miles north of Baghdad, forced him out of his car and opened fire, the agency quoted a police source as saying. The attackers then set fire to Luhaybi's car, but did not harm his young son, who was with him.
On a road south of Baghdad, U.S. helicopters Friday fired on suspected insurgents that the military said were operating an illegal checkpoint. A military statement said an unknown number of people were killed or wounded in the attack.
