Baghdad bombing kills 2 U.S. soldiers, 3 U.S. government personnel

Two American soldiers and three U.S. government employees were killed when a bomb exploded Tuesday in a local council building in a Shiite Muslim district of the capital, officials said.

The attack in Sadr City, the second aimed at a political meeting in two days, struck a blow at U.S. efforts to promote good governance, improve services and court allies after weeks of fighting in the Baghdad bastion of anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr.

The U.S. military blamed breakaway factions of Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, groups it alleges are supported by Iran. Tehran has denied the charge.

The explosion occurred hours before a vote to replace the Sadr City District Advisory Council chairman, Abdul Hassan Jbara. Jbara, who is accused by colleagues of having ties to militias, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The bomb was planted outside the office of his deputy and would-be successor, Hassan Shamma, said Iraqi police and council members who were there. It detonated as a group of American soldiers and civilian advisors entered the room, they said.

Two of the slain civilians were Americans, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo. They included Steven Farley, a State Department employee from Guthrie, Okla., and a Department of Defense employee whose identity was not immediately released. An Italian interpreter of Iraqi descent also was killed in the blast, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry.

Iraqi security officials said at least one Iraqi civilian died and four others were injured in the blast. The U.S. military said that it was not aware of any Iraqis killed, but that at least one U.S. soldier and two Iraqi council members were wounded.

Shamma, whose office was targeted, suffered a leg injury, said Sadr City Mayor Hassan Karim, who was visiting his colleagues in the hospital when he spoke to The Times.

Ahmed Hassan, the council spokesman, was walking toward Shamma’s office when the explosion blew him across the hallway.

“The blast was massive,” he said. “There was smoke everywhere and shards of glass.”

A council member who rushed to help said, “I saw the Americans come out with two stretchers with their colleagues’ bloodied and mangled bodies. One stretcher had flesh dangling from it.” He requested anonymity for security reasons.

The bombing followed an attack the day before that targeted Americans as they met with local officials in a town outside the capital. Such encounters are a key part of U.S. efforts to undermine support for militants by rebuilding institutions and jump-starting local economies as violence levels have dropped across Iraq.

On Monday, a gunman ambushed U.S. soldiers as they left the municipal building in Madaen, killing two of them and injuring three others in the town about 15 miles southeast of the capital. A local interpreter also was injured.

Madaen has long been a hotbed of Sunni and Shiite Muslim extremist violence, and Iraqi officials said the shooter was believed to be a current or former council member.

U.S. officials said they would not be deterred by the latest attacks.

“We remain committed as ever to helping Iraqis achieve the peace, stability and prosperity that will make such acts of terror a thing of the past,” Ambassador Ryan Crocker said in a statement.

Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, said the two attacks did not appear to be linked.

He said U.S. troops had a “good working relationship” with the council member whose office was targeted Tuesday. “Obviously the assailants did not appreciate that relationship,” he said.

U.S. soldiers caught a suspect who attempted to flee on a motorcycle and detained two others, all of whom tested positive for explosives residue, Stover said.

Brett Farley, the son of the slain State Department employee, blamed Sadr’s militiamen for the bombing. He said his father had told him the council had asked the chairman to resign last week because he “was an insurgent under the thumb of Muqtada Sadr.”

“This is their retaliation,” said Farley, the eldest of three sons, who was reached by telephone at his grandmother’s home in Crescent, Okla.

He said his father, a Navy veteran, was aware of the risks but was deeply committed to helping the impoverished district improve and break away from the control of Sadr’s militiamen.

“He had told us on a number of occasions that he believed so deeply in this that he was willing to die for it,” Farley said.

Hundreds of people, many of them civilians, have been killed in the fighting that pitted U.S. and Iraqi forces against Sadr’s militiamen this year.

The clashes subsided after the main Shiite factions in the national government negotiated a truce with the cleric’s representatives, paving the way for Iraqi forces to deploy throughout Sadr City, home to about 2.5 million people. But U.S. officers say breakaway factions of Sadr’s militia remain active there and elsewhere in the capital.

In other violence, a suicide car bomber attacked a police station in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least two people and injuring scores of others, police said. The bomber did not penetrate the station’s defenses but destroyed a nearby coffee shop and other buildings. Estimates of the number of wounded ranged from 70 to 90.

 alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Hameed, Raheem Salman and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.