The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, September 27, 2004, Page 4, Image 4
U.S., Iraq troops wounded in
2 car bombings near Falluiah
By FISNIKABRASHI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two car bombs
wounded American and Iraqi troops
west of the capital Sunday and a few
hours later the U.S. military announced
the arrest of a senior Iraqi National
Guard commander on suspicion of ties
to insurgents, underscoring the
challenges to building a strong Iraq
security service capable of restoring
stability.
The two attackers who died in the
twin blasts tried to ram their cars into a
National Guard base in Kharma, a town
on the outskirts of the insurgent
stronghold of Fallujah, a U.S. military
official s^id on condition of anonymity.
The number of U.S. and Iraqi
casualties was not immediately clear, but
a statement from the U.S. Marines said
there were no serious injuries among
American troops at the base.
The National Guard . is the
centerpiece of U.S. plans to turn over
security responsibilities after elections
slated for January and guardsmen have
been targeted repeatedly by insurgents
who are trying to undermine Iraq’s
interim government and drive out the
U.S.-led coalition.
But the threat may not only come
from outside the force. Guard Brig.
Gen. Talib al-Lahibi, who previously
served as an infantry officer in Saddam
Hussein’s army, was detained Thursday
in the province of Diyala, northeast of
Baghdad, a U.S. military statement
announced.
The statement provided no details,
but said he was suspected of having links
to militants who have been attacking
cqalition and Iraqi forces for 17 months.
Al-Lahibi was the acting head of the
Iraqi National Guard for Diyala
province, said Maj. Neal O’Brien,
spokesman for the U.S. Army’s 1st
Infantry Division.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian diplomat
and two British Muslim leaders urged
religious leaders here to help secure the
release of hostages.
Egyptian official Farouq Mabrouk
sought help for six Egyptian
telecommunications workers abducted
with four Iraqis last week. Mabrouk
refused to speak to reporters after his 30
minute meeting with Harith al-Dhari,
who heads the Association of Muslim
Scholars, a conservative organization
that has helped win the release of other
foreign captives.
Gunmen abducted two of the
Egyptians on Thursday in a raid on their
firm’s Baghdad office _ the latest in a
string of kidnappings targeting engineers
working on rebuilding Iraq. Eight other
employees, four Egyptians and four
Iraqis, were seized outside of Baghdad
on Wednesday.
Two senior officials of the Muslim
Council of Britain were in Baghdad
seeking freedom for hostage Kenneth
Bigley, a British civil engineer
kidnapped Sept. 16 with two Americans
who were later beheaded.
After meeting with Muslim. and
Christian leaders, Daud Abdullah and
Musharraf Hussain told reporters, “We
cannot hold a British citizen responsible
for what (British Prime Minister) Tony
Blair did.”
A posting on an Islamic Internet site
Saturday claimed followers of Jordanian
terror mastermind Abu-Musab al
Zarqawi had killed Bigley, but the
British Foreign Office said the claim was
not credible.
More than 140 foreigners have been
kidnapped in Iraq, some by anti-U.S.
insurgents and others by criminals
seeking ransom. At least 26 have been
killed, including the two American civil
engineers, Eugene Armstrong and Jack
Hensley.
Persistent violence, coupled with the
coalition forces’ lack of control in key
parts of the country, have raised
questions about the feasibility of holding
elections by the Jan. 31 deadline.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said
Sunday that the United States is
committed to allowing all Iraqis the
chance to vote, but the top U.S. military
commander in the region cautioned
against expecting that sort of
achievement.
/
Both Powell and Gen. John Abizaid
spoke of a major political and military
effort before the scheduled elections to
take back areas that insurgents now
control.
Powell said planning is under way for
an Iraqi conference, possibly next
month, that would include the leading
industrialized nations and regional
powers, including Iran and Syria.
“This was a way to reach out to Iraq’s
immediate neighbors and persuade them
that this is the time to help Iraq, so that
the region can become stable,” Powell
said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
In other violence Sunday, U.S.
troops and insurgents traded fire in
Ramadi, west of Baghdad, resulting in at
least three people being killed and four
wounded, witnesses and hospital
officials said. Insurgents fired mortar
rounds and rockets at two U.S. positions
west and east of the city, and U.S. forces
responded with shelling, striking a house
in Tamim neighborhood, witnesses said.
A rocket slammed into a busy
Baghdad neighborhood, killing at least
one person and wounding eight,
hospital officials and witnesses said.
Hours after the attack, another loud
blast shook the area near the Green
Zone, site of the.U.S. Embassy and the
interim Iraqi government. Smoke rose
above the zone and alert sirens sounded.
It was not clear if anything had been hit.
SAURABH DAS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
• U.S. soldiers inspect the site shortly after a rocket attack killed one person and injured eight in Karrada district of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday .
The rocket also destroyed a car and shattered the windows of 10 shops.
■ JEANNE
Continued from page 1
one season since Texas in 1886. And
the hurricane season still has two
months to go.
Rain blew sideways in wind that
reached 120 mph when Hurricane
Jeanne’s eye hit land late Saturday
night; by 8 p.m. EDT Sunday it had
weakened to a tropical storm with
sustained wind near 55 mph.
At least a foot of water rushed
through some streets in Vero Beach,
where a mattress floated through one
neighborhood.
President Bush declared a major
disaster area in Florida. The
hurricanes have prompted the largest
relief effort in the Federal Emergency
Management Agency’s history,
eclipsing responses for the 1994
earthquake in Northridge, Calif., and
the 2001 terrorist attacks, director
Michael Brown said.
“You’re going to have some areas
that have been hit once, twice and
sometimes maybe three times,”
Brown said. “That’s very frustrating,
I know, for those who live in those
communities.”
Frances was larger, while Charley
and Ivan were more powerful. But
Jeanne was bad enough, once again
sending the Sunshine State into a
state of emergency.
Gov. Jeb Bush sought to reassure
weary Floridians. “This will become a
memory,” he said. “This does come
to an end, and when it does we can
probably use the term ‘normal’
again.”
Seawater submerged the bottom
floor of condominiums on
Hutchinson Island, where Josh
Lumberson rode out the storm. The
parking lot was under 5 feet of sand
and water, and sand rose to the
kitchen cabinets inside first-floor
condos. The ocean, once 75 yards
away, lapped at the foundation.
“It sounded like the whole
building was coming down?”
Lumberson said. “You could hear
every metal screw coming out of the
walls.”
As the wind subsided, the clang of
metal siding could still be heard on
the barrier island.
Jeanne made landfall as a
Category 3 hurricane with winds of
up to 120 mph just before midnight
Saturday at Hutchinson Island, 35
miles north of West Palm Beach.
Frances struck in almost the same
spot.
Once inland, Jeanne’s 400-mile
diameter system trudged across the
state, passing northeast of Tampa. It
then headed toward the Panhandle,
which was still recovering from Ivan.
Max Mayfield, director of the
National Hurricane Center in
Miami, described the similar paths of
Jeanne and Frances as perhaps
unprecedented.
The toll from the latest storm
extended as far north as Daytona
Beach, where the famous beach was
ravaged by erosion, and south to
Miami, where one person was
electrocuted after touching a downed
power line. ,
Two people died when the sport
utility vehicle they were driving
plunged into a lake beside the Sawgrass
Expressway south of Boca Raton. In
Clay County southwest of Jacksonville,
a 15-year-old boy died after being
pinned by a falling tree Sunday.
In Brevard County, a man was
found dead in a ditch in Palm Bay in
what police called an apparent
drowning. In nearby Micco, a 60
year-old man was found dead after a
hurricane party at a home. He was
found lying in water after the house
had flooded; police said the death
may be alcohol-related or the man
may have drowned.
Jeanne’s predecessors killed at
least 70 people in Florida and caused
billions of dollars in damage.
In St. Lucie County north of West
Palm Beach, police rescued five
families when the hurricane’s eye
passed over late Saturday, including a
wheelchair-bound couple in their 90s
whose mobile home collapsed around
them, emergency operations
spokeswoman Linette Trabulsy said.
In Rockledge, the Indian River
overflowed its banks, lifting docks off
their moorings carrying them into
roads and yards.
Single-engine planes flipped over
at Palm Beach International Airport.
At Cape Canaveral, the third
hurricane to hit NASA’s spaceport in
just over a month blew out more
panels and left more gaping holes in
the massive shutde assembly
building.
More than 3,000 National Guard
troops were deployed to aid relief
efforts.
But some residents acknowledged
it could have been worse. Peirce
Braun assessed the mess from the
front yard of his bungalow.
“It’s really not that bad,” he said.
“The worst thing in Florida is to be
without the AC.”
Among the areas left without
power were much of Palm Beach
County, population 1.1 million, and,
for the second time in three weeks _
all of Vero Beach.
With Jeanne dumping heavy rain,
there was fear of flooding in the days
to come from swollen rivers in east
and central Florida, already saturated
by two previous hurricanes.
In Sanford, a city near Orlando
surrounded by lakes and rivers, a foot
of water flowed down a scenic road
that parallels Lake Monroe, and
three-foot waves broke over the
seawall that separates the lake from
the historic downtown area.
State officials said 59,000 people,
many with homes already damaged
by Frances, rode out Jeanne in
shelters.
By 8 p.m. EDT, Tropical Storm
Jeanne was centered about 30 miles
southwest of Gainesville, and was
moving nortlvnorthwest near 13 mph.
It was forecast to weaken into a tropical
depression sornetime Monday. ^
i
ELAINE THOMPSON/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hundreds of tiny earthquakes have been reported at Mount St.
Helens, but it is unlikely they pose any hazard to anyone outside
of the volcano’s crater, state seismologists said Friday.
■ VOLCANO
Continued from page 3
mud and rock debris.
That portion of the mountain blew
out during the 1980 eruption that left
57 people dead, devastating hundreds
of square miles around the peak and
spewing ash over much of the
Northwest.
The quakes have occurred at
depths less than one mile below the
lava dome within the mountain’s
crater. Some of the earthquakes
suggest the involvement of pressurized
fluids, such as water or steam, and
perhaps magma.
The cause and outcome of the
swarm were uncertain Sunday
evening. A group of scientists planned
to visit the mountain Monday to
collect data.
“There’s been no explosions, there’s
no outward sign that anything is
occurring. (The-notice) is all based on
the pattern of earthquake activity that is
occurring below the dome,” said Scott.
Experts believe there is “an
increased probability of explosions
from the lava dome if the level of
current unrest continues or escalates,”
USGS ' and the University of
Washington Pacific Northwest
Seismograph Network in Seattle said
in a joint statement.
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