US launches probe into devastating Mosul attack

The US military launched an investigation today into the cause of a devastating blast in a mess tent at a base in northern Iraq which killed 22 people and injured 72 in one of the deadliest attacks since the start of the war.

Troops blocked Mosul’s five bridges over the Tigris River that link the western and eastern sectors of the city.

As warplanes flew overhead, US soldiers could be seen conducting sweeps through the eastern neighbourhoods of Muthanna, Wahda and Hadabaa.

In a sign of the of the simmering tensions, most schools in the city were closed and few cars and people could be seen on the streets. Even traffic policemen were not at major intersections as usual.

Initial reports said that a 122mm rocket ripping through the ceiling of a tent, spraying shrapnel as soldiers sat down to lunch yesterday in their Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, 225 miles north of Baghdad.

But, a radical Sunni Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said it was a “martyrdom operation” – a reference to a suicide bomber – that targeted the mess hall.

“We are still investigating what caused the explosion,” said Captain Dorren Luke, a US military spokesman in Baghdad,.

The dead included 18 Americans – 14 soldiers and four civilian contractors - and four Iraqis. Of the 72 wounded, 51 are US military personnel and the remainder are American civilians, Iraqi troops, and other foreigners.

At the military hospital near Mosul airfield, doctors and orderlies treated dozens of soldiers for burns, shrapnel wounds and damage to their eyes.

“This is the worst we have seen in the 11 months since we have been here,” said Master Sergeant David Scott, chief ward master for the hospital.

It was the latest in a week of deadly strikes across Iraq that highlighted the growing power of the insurgents in the run-up to the next month’s national elections.

And it came as Prime Minister Tony Blair was holding talks with the Iraqi leadership in Baghdad.

President George Bush said the explosion should not derail the elections and that he hoped relatives of those killed know that their loved ones died in “a vital mission for peace".

“I’m confident democracy will prevail in Iraq,” he said.

Mortar attacks on US bases, particularly on the huge white tents that serve as dining halls, have been frequent in Iraq for more than a year.

With people screaming and thick smoke billowing, soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot, said US newspaper reporter Jeremy Redmon, embedded with the troops in Mosul.

Redmon said the dead included two soldiers from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion, which had just sat down to eat. The force knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats as a fireball enveloped the top of the tent and shrapnel sprayed into the area, Redmon said.

Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters, while others wandered around in a daze and collapsed, he said.

“I can’t hear! I can’t hear!” one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which claimed the responsibility for the blast, is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime. The Sunni group claimed responsibility for the execution of 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul.