Bombs Kill 2 American Soldiers, 2 Iraqi Youths

Roadside bombs, which have become the most lethal threat to American troops in Iraq, killed two more U.S. soldiers Sunday, one in the capital and another near the volatile Sunni Muslim town of Fallouja, 30 miles to the west. The Baghdad attack also claimed the lives of two Iraqi children.

Meanwhile, the death toll in a series of tightly synchronized car bombings and rocket attacks a day earlier in the southern city of Karbala rose to 19 -- seven coalition soldiers and 12 Iraqis. Throughout the fog-shrouded day, tearful funeral processions wound their way through the streets of the Shiite Muslim holy city.

Medical officials said many of the nearly 200 people wounded remained hospitalized.

Sunday’s powerful blast on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, which killed a member of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, wounded five U.S. soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter together with eight members of the Iraqi civil defense force, said military spokesman Capt. Jason Beck.

The explosion, east of the central Baghdad district of Karada, occurred shortly after 10:30 a.m., said U.S. soldiers who treated the wounded and searched for more bombs.

The streets were filled with people shopping or running errands at the time. The slain children had been walking close to where the bomb went off, military officials said.

“It’s the worst one of these I’ve ever seen,” said a soldier from the 2nd Armored Division’s 37th Battalion, who declined to give his name. “It’s a very heavily trafficked area, and it was a really big bomb.”

Homemade bombs -- “improvised explosive devices,” as the military calls them -- have become the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents taking aim at American troops. The bombs are concealed in trash piles, empty cans, cardboard boxes, old piping, even dead chickens and other animals.

Field commanders say that lately, the bombers have been planting secondary devices meant to kill and maim troops arriving to help those hurt in the initial attack. Last week, a U.S. soldier was killed trying to disarm one of the devices he had spotted.

U.S. troops are constantly on patrol, often in Humvees whose doors and floorboards are not protected by heavy armor. Insurgents watch soldiers’ movements and target routes commonly used by coalition forces.

“We all know we could drive over one of these at any moment -- you never stop thinking about it,” said the soldier whose unit responded to the Baghdad explosion.

The soldier killed near Fallouja was a member of the 82nd Airborne Division who was traveling in a convoy just outside of the Euphrates River town, which has been one of the prime flashpoints for the insurgency. Three soldiers were wounded in the attack.

U.S. forces have fought back with raids aimed at arresting rebel leaders as well as low-level operatives. Officials say they are also trying to choke off the insurgents’ supply of weaponry.

Since the Dec. 13 capture of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein near his ancestral hometown of Tikrit, hundreds of arrests have been made and many arms caches, large and small, have been seized.

Troops conducting raids near Abavachi, a village north of Baghdad, uncovered what they described as a weapons trove late Saturday -- nearly 600 rockets. The 57-millimeter projectiles were found carefully wrapped in plastic and buried in a dirt berm.

Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, said an informant’s tip led troops to the arms dump. Troops secured the area overnight and destroyed the rockets in the morning.

“This isn’t just stray weaponry. These rockets either belonged to the insurgents or to someone who was intending to sell them to them,” Aberle said.

In Karbala, a spokesman for the Polish-led coalition force that occupies south-central Iraq said five suspects had been detained in connection with the series of car-bomb blasts and mortar and rocket attacks on Saturday -- the deadliest wave of insurgent assaults since Hussein’s capture.

The coalition lost five Bulgarians -- one of whom died of his wounds Sunday -- and two Thais in the attacks. Five of the 12 Iraqi dead also succumbed Sunday to their wounds.