The Islamic Army in Iraq, the Sunni group, lost seven men, according to Thaer Ahmed, 28, one of its fighters. Ahmed denied the Islamic Army had targeted Shiite pilgrims, claiming that was a rumor fomented by Iraq's interim government and U.S. forces in order to provoke a confrontation between the insurgents and the Shiite majority.
"We didn't want to fight them, because we did not want to lose the people supporting us in the south, but we had to," Ahmed said. "We defended ourselves." The second front, he added, will be "more difficult, because these are Iraqis and we don't know their intentions by looking at them."
A U.S. Army soldier guards Iraqi men awaiting questioning in Mosul after an insurgent attack. Fighting in the northern city has surged since November.
(Jim Macmillan -- AP)
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After watching the fighting from his cigarette shop, Hussein Salem complained that U.S. armored units had waited just out of range, about a mile away, while sectarian fighting raged.
"The Americans are feeling good because the Iraqis are fighting Iraqis," said Salem, 52. "If the situation remains like this, the people will start to leave, and it will be like Fallujah. Two tanks could stop this."
But later, the American column approached: 10 armored vehicles and 10 Humvees. Islamic Army guerrillas fired grenades, and the U.S. armor responded with heavy fire. In the ensuing 40 minutes of battle, another 19 Sunni fighters were killed, including two Kuwaitis and a Jordanian, said Ahmed, who collected the bodies in a pickup truck.
Witnesses said five Iraqi police officers were also killed, as was a woman hit by stray fire. Witnesses also reported several U.S. personnel wounded and armored vehicles on fire. The military had no immediate comment, a spokeswoman said.
The attack in Baghdad was the second in two days on Iraqi police in the capital, a dramatic show of the insurgents' ability to strike at the heart of the country whenever they choose. A day earlier, guerrillas overran a police station in southern Baghdad, killing 16 officers, freeing dozens of prisoners and emptying a police arsenal.
The two car bombs detonated at about 9:30 a.m., the U.S. military said. The sound of the blasts, which sent up a column of black smoke, reverberated across the capital, rattling windows on both sides of the Tigris River dividing Baghdad.
"It was a nightmare," said Thamer Halaib, a 25-year-old guard at a nearby parking lot. "I had never heard anything like it."
One of the bombs was carried in a green Chevrolet, witnesses said. Police said they fired on it as it hurtled past barricades, then detonated, killing the driver. Crowds ran through streets cloaked in debris and black smoke, some of them screaming for help. Windows were shattered in nearby apartment buildings. Fearing an insurgent assault, police fired their weapons for a half-hour after the explosions, witnesses said.
"Blood and parts of flesh were covering the floor," said Hassan Mousa, 27, a security guard who was taken to Yarmouk Hospital with shrapnel wounds. "I tell the one who killed himself and the civilians, 'May God curse you and may God take you to hell.' "
At the scene Saturday, residents bemoaned both the government's inability to stop the bloodshed and the indiscriminate killing by the insurgents.
"What is the government doing?" demanded Muhannad Falih, 38, an Iraqi employee in the compound that houses the embassy and Iraqi government. "They are losing day after day and the terrorists are becoming stronger."
Hours later, a wooden coffin carrying one of the victims was loaded into a white pickup. Over and over, a woman in black wailed, "I can't believe you're dead!"
An official at Yarmouk Hospital reported three dead and 34 wounded. Witnesses reported seeing more bodies, but neither the U.S. military nor Iraqi officials released numbers of casualties.
The attack came about two hours after a roadside mine detonated near a U.S. military convoy, about seven miles west of the restive town of Baqubah in central Iraq. The military said one U.S. soldier was killed and another was wounded in the incident. In eastern Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed another soldier and wounded five others.
Correspondent Scott Wilson in Mosul and special correspondent Bassam Sebti in Baghdad contributed to this report.
