Iraqi insurgents launch car bomb attacks

Insurgents detonated a pair of car bombs outside an Iraqi National Guard compound today, wounding American and Iraqi forces, a U.S. military official said.

Militants tried to ram the cars into the base located in Kharma, a town on the outskirts of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The number of casualties was not immediately clear. A statement from the U.S. Marines said there were no serious injuries among U.S. forces on the base.

The Marines described the first vehicle as a black BMW that exploded while being driven through the barrier system outside the base.

It was followed seconds later by a blue Kia pickup, which also detonated inside the barriers, a statement from the Marines said.

The attack occurred at 8am (6am BST) and caused serious damage to the main building, said Bassem Abbas, a witness.

He added that shortly after the attack, U.S. troops cordoned off the area and prevented people from getting close.

The twin blasts bring to at least 34 the number of suicide car bombings in September, the highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. As many as seven car bombs have been detonated in a single day this month.

A pair of senior U.S. military officials, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity today, said suicide bombers were a mixture of Iraqis and foreign “jihadists” who entered the country to fight against the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies.

Some would-be bombers had been captured. One U.S. official said a bomber got “cold feet” and turned himself in, telling the U.S. military that he had been indoctrinated in a cult-like manner by insurgents who told him “you just volunteered to be a suicide bomber today”.

The official said bomb makers have been known to install “fail safe” remote bomb triggers on the car bombs, so that the car can be detonated remotely if the driver bails out.

U.S. pilots have launched repeated airstrikes on sites in Fallujah that the U.S. military says are being used by followers of Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Those strikes have killed more than 100 suspected insurgents to date, the military said today.

But U.S. troops have not entered Fallujah since the end of a three-week siege in April that killed hundreds.