Waterborne suicide commandos launched a wave of coordinated boat attacks in Iraq yesterday, targeting a vital offshore oil-export terminal and killing two U.S. service members, officials said.
Five other coalition members were wounded during the clash in the Persian Gulf as two of three attack boats exploded alongside a ship tied up at a terminal about six miles offshore, British military spokesmen said.
A third commando boat was intercepted by a coalition ship as it approached an exclusion zone and there was an explosion soon after it was boarded.
The coordinated strikes, similar to the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000, came as five other U.S. soldiers and at least three dozen others were killed in the latest violence during the bloodiest month since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein.
In other attacks, at least 13 Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded when rockets or mortar bombs struck a busy market in the Shiite Muslim area of Sadr City in Baghdad.
Anti-American insurgents placed a sign on a dead donkey saying “This is Bush” as angry residents of Sadr City – a base for rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – held up bloodied human remains to TV cameras and said American helicopters had fired at the market.
Five U.S. soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on a U.S. base just north of Baghdad, a military spokesman said. Six other soldiers were wounded.
Yesterday’s casualties brought to 106 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq this month. A total of 715 service members have died there.
With Post Wire Services