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June 27, 2005

Bombing Attacks On Iraqi Forces Kill 38 In North

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ERIC SCHMITT

MOSUL, Iraq, June 26 - Four suicide bomb attacks struck Iraqi police and an Iraqi Army base in a 16-hour wave of insurgent violence in the northern city of Mosul on Saturday and Sunday, killing 38 people and wounding scores more. One American commander said the violence continued a trend in the past few weeks of insurgent attacks intensely focused on Iraqi security forces.

The attacks came as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld echoed remarks by his advisers in recent months suggesting that the insurgency could last as long as a dozen years and that Iraq would become more violent before elections later this year.

The rate of insurgent attacks remains steady, but the typical attack has grown more lethal, Mr. Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday." "They're killing a lot more Iraqis," he said.

Bush administration officials have been at odds with military leaders over the strength and resiliency of the insurgency. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East, said last week that the insurgency was undiminished, seemingly countering a remark days before by Vice President Dick Cheney, who asserted it was in its "last throes."

With polls showing that support for the war is dropping, President Bush is expected to use a prime-time speech on Tuesday at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., to press his case for a large continued military presence in Iraq and explain why the administration's strategy will eventually work.

The success of Iraqi forces is the linchpin of the United States' exit strategy from Iraq, as many battle commanders contend that the country will slip into a civil war if the United States withdraws large numbers of troops before Iraqi forces are ready to take over.

"There's only one way for the insurgents to win: that's to drive us out before the Iraqis are ready to assume the battle space," General Abizaid said Sunday on the CNN program "Late Edition." "If that's what happens, they could win. But it's very, very clear to me that we're going to stay the course."

Mosul, the third-largest city in Iraq and the hub of the north, had a security collapse in November when almost all of the police officers and most Iraqi troops stationed around the city abandoned their posts; some helped ransack their own bases. The crisis forced the American military to pull troops from the fight in Falluja to reinforce soldiers here.

American units have given a boost to efforts to train and equip Iraqi police officers and troops here, and American commanders hope Iraqi forces will be able to provide much of the security for elections. Those hopes have been bolstered by the capture in recent days of top terrorist leaders in Mosul, including Muhammad Shakara, the head of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network in northern Iraq.

But the attacks over the weekend - on a traffic checkpoint, a police headquarters, a hospital security gate and the principal Iraqi Army base in the north, Al Kasik - demonstrated how susceptible the Iraqi forces remain to suicide strikes.

"The trend the past month has been targeting the Iraqi security forces," said Maj. Mike Lawrence, executive officer of the unit that oversees most of western Mosul, the First Battalion of the 24th Infantry. On Sunday, the Zarqawi network claimed responsibility in an Internet posting for the two deadliest attacks in Mosul.

So far, Major Lawrence said in an interview, Iraqi forces are not running away. In November, he said, they bolted after what in most cases was only the threat of violence.

The attacks in Mosul over the weekend began Saturday night when a suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint about 8 p.m., killing five officers and wounding two more.

The bombing was followed Sunday by a 6 a.m. strike on the Bab al-Tob police station in central Mosul. A truck holding what the military estimated was 1,000 pounds of explosives - hidden beneath fruit and melons - parked next to the police station. The bomb ripped apart the station and killed 10 policemen, military officials said. Two civilians were also killed, and eight policemen wounded.

An Iraqi policeman at the scene told a reporter that as the truck drove toward the station, a policeman "opened the barbed wires for him, thinking that he was trying to cross the street to unload his cargo in the nearby wholesale market," adding, "The suicide bomber was able to get close to the gate of the police station and blow himself up."

Shortly after that attack, a suicide bomber struck Al Kasik, a major army base west of Mosul, killing 16 Iraqi civilians and wounding seven others, the military said.

Around noon, a man wearing a hidden explosive vest laced with ball bearings approached guards at Al Jamouri hospital in central Mosul, acting as if he needed medical attention. The guards took him inside, where he detonated his vest. The blast killed five Iraqi police officers, the military said.

At least 10 more people were killed in other violence across Iraq, including six police commandos gunned down in western Baghdad and a high-ranking police official assassinated in southern Baghdad, according to an Interior Ministry official. One American soldier was killed in Baghdad on Sunday by a homemade bomb, the military said. And in Kirkuk, insurgents wired an explosive belt onto a dog and detonated the device when the dog wandered into an Iraqi police patrol, wounding one policeman.

In Washington, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Abizaid said the American-led operation in Iraq was making progress, but acknowledged that the insurgency had become increasingly deadly and could last for years.

"Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years," Mr. Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday." "Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."

Mr. Rumsfeld also acknowledged that American and Iraqi officials had met with people who presented themselves as insurgents, but on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" he said of the Iraqis, "They're not going to try to bring in the people with blood on their hands, for sure, but they certainly are reaching out continuously, and we help to facilitate those from time to time."

Between them, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Abizaid appeared on all five major Sunday network news programs. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, plans to speak on several morning network news programs on Monday.

The administration's exit strategy from Iraq hinges on training enough Iraqi military and police forces to take over for American and allied troops. But some senior American officers have said it could be two years before enough Iraqis are trained sufficiently and the insurgency is weakened to the point where Iraqis can handle things on their own.

"It's clear to me that by the middle of - the early part of spring next year to the summer of next year, you'll see Iraqi security forces move into the lead in the counterinsurgency fight," General Abizaid said Sunday on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "That doesn't mean that I'm saying we'll come home by then. We'll have to judge how they're doing, how the political process is, how the situation is abroad."

Richard A. Oppel reported from Mosul for this article, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, whose name is being withheld for security reasons, contributed reporting from Mosul.