Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, voiced confidence Saturday that the United States would not abandon its mission in this violence-racked country amid a post-election re-evaluation of Iraq strategy.
“The weeks and months ahead will require courage and determination,” Casey said at Veterans Day ceremony for 75 U.S. troops at Baghdad’s Camp Victory. “But succeed we will.”
Those comments were among his first public statements since the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week.
Washington political insiders have speculated that Casey and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also at the ceremony, could leave their posts after the Republican Party’s defeat at the polls. Both quickly left Saturday’s ceremony after reading prepared statements.
In violence Saturday, Sunni gunmen ambushed a convoy of minibuses at a fake checkpoint on the dangerous highway south of Baghdad, killing 10 Shiite passengers and kidnapping about 50, The Associated Press reported.
Across the country, at least 52 other people were killed in violence or were found dead, five of them decapitated Iraqi soldiers.
Police said the mass kidnapping and killing was near the volatile town of Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad in the so-called Triangle of Death.
In the capital, two car bombs exploded near the city’s main market, killing eight civilians and injuring 37. One of the bombs hit the area of the market that sells sports equipment, including soccer balls and volleyball nets. Near-daily explosions at the wholesale market have further stifled an already moribund economy.
In other violence, a roadside bomb in an upscale Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad killed one and injured five. Another roadside bomb in west Baghdad killed three passersby and injured three.
Assassins shot dead an official in Iraq’s intelligence service in southern Baghdad and killed a police sergeant in eastern Baghdad.
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Gunmen killed two bodyguards of a former member of parliament in an east Baghdad shootout that left four others injured, including the politician.
Iraqi police discovered the mutilated, bullet-riddled corpses of at least 24 men and a woman scattered around the capital, police officials said.
Suicide bombers rammed U.S. military convoys near Taji, 20 miles north of the capital, and in eastern Baghdad, Iraqi police said. The military did not report any casualties.
The U.S. military also effectively admitted that it had come up empty-handed in its quest to find a soldier missing for nearly three weeks. It offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the recovery of Army Spec. Ahmed Qusai al-Taei, an American of Iraqi descent.
He was abducted Oct. 23 outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad while on a visit to his Iraqi wife and in-laws.