WASHINGTON – Iraqi terrorists blew up parts of an electrical plant in a rocket-propelled grenade attack yesterday, sending a huge fireball into the sky and injuring two more U.S. soldiers.
The attack occurred in the town of Fallujah, a hotbed of support for deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, where U.S. forces have been conducting a series of raids in an effort to quell the escalating guerrilla war against coalition occupation forces.
The injured U.S. soldiers were guarding the power plant, and military officials said the grenade attack appeared to be aimed at killing them.
However, the grenades missed and slammed into two transformers at the power plant, shooting a huge wall of flame into the sky that burned for several hours and knocked out power in many parts of the city 35 miles west of Baghdad for hours.
One soldier suffered a concussion and the other bruises from the explosion, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
The attack is the latest in a series of guerrilla-style raids that have resulted in the deaths of 42 U.S. soldiers since President Bush declared the Iraq war over on May 1.
Saddam’s holdouts also ambushed an armored patrol for the second night in a row in the town of Samara and U.S. forces conducted nine raids in Baghdad, arresting five people, Central Command said.
In addition to attacks on U.S. troops, U.N. agencies reported that Saddam’s thugs have also sabotaged power plants and water treatment facilities, as well as fired on convoys delivering humanitarian aid.
Defense officials confirmed that a secret unit of Special Forces Commandos and CIA operatives, known as Task Force 20, has intensified the hunt for Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay in the wake of recent intercepted communications among loyalists who are talking as though Iraq’s former first family survived two U.S. airstrikes.