Mortar rounds exploded near U.S. headquarters in Baghdad and a car bomb went off by a Shiite shrine in Karbala yesterday as pro-Saddam death squads continued their deadly Ramadan offensive.
A day after 16 American soldiers were slaughtered in a missile strike on a Chinook-47 transport helicopter, a soldier from the Army’s 4th Infantry Division died when his vehicle hit a land mine in Tikrit.
The increasingly organized and ruthless Iraqi resistance has been issuing leaflets in mosques in major cities declaring this time to be “days of resistance” and warning of “modern and advanced methods” of terror.
As the bloody offensive continued, there were four loud explosions in central Baghdad near a former Saddam palace now used by the Coalition Provisional Authority. A military spokesman in Baghdad said it was a mortar attack. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Farther south in Karbala, three passers-by were killed and 12 were injured when a car bomb exploded outside a hotel near the Shiite shrine of the Imam Hussein.
Meanwhile, 16 of the 20 soldiers wounded in Sunday’s helicopter attack near Fallujah – 15 men and one woman – were flown to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany yesterday.