Six more U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi civilians died in two roadside bomb incidents Tuesday as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced he would dispatch a team to Iraq to study the feasibility of early elections.
In the first attack, three soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division were killed and one critically injured in what appeared to be a particularly large explosion as their convoy passed through the town of Khaldiyah in the Sunni Triangle area, where the U.S. military has encountered persistent Iraqi resistance.
Witnesses said there were two explosions shortly before 1 p.m. The first hit a Humvee, and when reinforcement troops arrived at the scene, a second bomb went off.
Abdul Hamid Marzouk, a nurse at the Ramadi Hospital, where the Iraqi casualties were brought, confirmed that two Iraqis were dead–Hadi Abd Shehab, the director of agriculture in Khaldiyah, and Hamid Nayef, a taxi driver.
Nayef, who was driving by at the time of the blast, died of head injuries, according to Marzouk.
Official killed by bullet
Shehab died of a gunshot wound to the stomach. He had been standing in his office not far from the blast. Although it was unclear who shot him, witnesses said that after the initial explosion, U.S. troops began firing indiscriminately.
U.S. spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said a quick reaction force from the 82nd Airborne arrived on the scene after the first explosion and came under “small-arms fire from unknown assailants.”
In the second incident, three U.S. soldiers were killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb hit their convoy near the town of Iskandariya, about 30 miles south of Baghdad. The attack occurred around 8 p.m.
In another incident Tuesday, CNN reported that one of its Iraqi translator-producers and an Iraqi driver were shot and killed by unidentified assailants on a highway outside Baghdad.
CNN said its news team, which included correspondent Michael Holmes, was returning in a two-car convoy from an assignment in southern Iraq when their vehicles were attacked. A security guard employed by CNN returned fire.
The network identified the dead as translator-producer Dureid Issa Mohammed and driver Yasser Khateeb.
Despite the recent surge of violence, Kimmitt said the situation is “manageable.”
“We certainly have enough forces in the country,” he said, adding, “We believe we have sufficient capability maintaining reasonable security.”
Early Wednesday, a large car bomb exploded near a Baghdad hotel.
The blast, about 6:30 a.m., sheared off the front of the al-Shaheen Hotel in the embassy district. There were several walking wounded around the blast area, and Iraqi police reported at least three fatalities as U.S. troops sealed off the area.
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It was unclear whether any Westerners were staying at the hotel. Neighbors say the owner had been threatened last week.
The continuing violence underscores the problems facing the UN mission, which Annan said would return to Iraq only after “we are given assurances that the practical and security arrangements are in place.”
Annan pulled the UN personnel from Iraq in October after an Aug. 19 suicide bomb at its Baghdad headquarters left 22 dead, including mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Speaking in Paris on Tuesday, Annan said, “I have concluded that the United Nations can play a constructive role in helping break the current impasse.”
Last week, in a significant about-face, the Bush administration asked for UN assistance in Iraq. But at the same time, Washington hopes the UN delegation will back its contention that organizing elections before the planned July 1 transfer of power would be unwise because of a lack of security and the absence of voter rolls and election laws. The U.S. favors a system of regional caucuses.
Annan was non-committal. “I have already made it clear that in my view there is no single `right way.’ I strongly hold to the idea that the most sustainable way forward would be one that came from the Iraqis themselves,” he said.
“The mission will ascertain the views of a broad spectrum of Iraqi society in the search for alternatives that might be developed to move forward the formation of a provisional government,” he said.
Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said the civilian authority and its leader, Paul Bremer, would cooperate with Annan’s team.
Leading the call for direct elections is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a reclusive 73-year-old Shiite cleric who has emerged as Iraq’s most influential political power.
Sunnis, Kurds alarmed
Al-Sistani argues that elections are the only way to guarantee that Iraq’s long-repressed Shiite majority, who represent about 60 percent of the population in this nation of 24 million, would secure their fair share of the political spoils. The prospect has alarmed Iraq’s Sunni minority, its traditional ruling class, as well as Kurds in the north and secular Iraqis.
The attack in Khaldiyah was the second in four days. A car bomb killed three American soldiers Saturday at a checkpoint near the entrance of a U.S. base.
The latest deaths brought the number of Americans killed in Iraq since the war began to 523.