Nine killed in Iraq bombing and mortar attack

An Iraqi guardsman, three civilians and five US soldiers were killed when insurgents detonated a car bomb and levelled a military headquarters in the city of Samarra with a massive mortar barrage, the military said.

US troops – backed by attack helicopters – then fanned out through the city to hunt down the attackers in clashes that lasted into late yesterday afternoon.

As many as 44 people were wounded, including 20 US soldiers and four Iraqi guardsmen, the military and hospital officials said.

Also yesterday, the Philippines prohibited its citizens from travelling to Iraq to work as contract workers after militants released a videotape threatening to kill a Filipino hostage if the country did not withdraw its troops.

At around 10.30am local time yesterday, Iraqi insurgents lashed out at US forces in Samarra, a hotbed of anti-coalition resistance 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Major Neal O’Brien, the spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division.

One witness, Khalid Salih, said the gate of the headquarters building shared by US forces and their Iraqi National Guard allies was open when a sport utility vehicle drove in and immediately exploded.

Insurgents then launched 38 mortars at the headquarters, destroying the building, Major O’Brien said. Some of the rounds landed in surrounding residential districts.

Around 25 minutes after the mortar attack – once radar determined where it had originated – US soldiers responded with four mortar rounds of their own.

Troops moved through the streets to flush out the insurgents, and four fighters shot at the soldiers before taking refuge in a building, Maj O’Brien said. US helicopters swooped in and attacked with Hellfire missiles, killing the four attackers.

Before the attack yesterday, a US military convoy in Samarra was targeted by a roadside bomb that wounded one soldier.

Late last night, four large explosions were heard at an Iraqi base in the town of Mishahda, 25 miles north of Baghdad. Volleys of gunfire broke out immediately afterward. US military officials had no immediate comment.

In another attack, gunmen along the road from Samarra to Balad strafed a truck, killing the two Turkish truck drivers inside and causing the vehicle to flip over, witnesses said. Insurgents have taken many truck drivers hostage in an effort to spread fear and disrupt supply efforts for US forces.

Meanwhile, an explosion killed former senior Baath party official, Ali Abbas Hassan, as he left his textile factory in Baghdad, said police Lieutenant Anmar Yassin. Authorities did not know the cause of the explosion.

Early today the Al-Jazeera television network broadcast a video showing masked, armed men threatening to execute two Bulgarian hostages if the US military did not release all Iraqi detainees within 24 hours.

The video showed the two unidentified Bulgarians sitting with their hands cuffed, flanked by three masked men.

More than 4,000 Filipino civilian contractors serve food, clean toilets and form the backbone of the support staff in Iraq for US forces.

The US military would be hard-pressed to operate in Iraq without the extra manpower the Filipinos provide.

Word of the capture of a Filipino hostage – and the insurgents’ threat to kill him – heaped pressure on Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who decided yesterday to bar more contract workers from travelling to Iraq.

She announced no decision on whether to extend the deployment of Manila’s 51 troops past their scheduled departure date this month.

The hostage was shown surrounded by armed and masked men on a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera on Wednesday.

ABS-CBN TV, quoted the Philippine ambassador in Qatar, identifying the hostage as Angelo dela Cruz, a truck driver who crossed into Iraq from Saudi Arabia.

The Philippines has been among the biggest supporters of the US-led war on terrorism, in large part because it has faced a Muslim extremist threat of its own.