Car Bombers Kill 11 Iraqis Outside Base

Two suicide car bombers struck a Polish-commanded military base here Wednesday, killing 11 other people and wounding 52 in an attack that would have been more deadly if guards had not opened fire and stopped the vehicles from entering the compound.

The car and pickup truck blew up outside the entrance, killing two families asleep in their houses next to the base. A total of 1,500 pounds of explosives was used in the bombs, which shattered windows two miles away, said U.S. Army Maj. Ralph Manos.

“This is just another example of how terrorists are ruining the lives of innocent Iraqis,” Manos said.

Eleven Iraqis were killed in the blast, along with the bombers, whose nationalities were unknown, said the director of the hospital in this Shiite Muslim-dominated city south of Baghdad, near the ancient site of Babylon. Forty more Iraqis were wounded, most of them suffering minor injuries, said hospital director Mohammed Taie.

The explosion seriously wounded 12 soldiers -- 10 of them Polish, one American and one Hungarian. All appeared likely to survive, Manos said. A number of other soldiers suffered superficial injuries.

The attack was the latest in a campaign intended to destabilize Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition struggling to prepare for transition to Iraqi sovereignty at midyear, officials said. The onslaught has included a wide variety of targets.

Last week, more than 100 Iraqis were killed within 24 hours in a pair of suicide bombings of a police station in Iskandariya and an army recruitment center in Baghdad.

In November, a truck bomb killed 17 soldiers and paramilitary police officers and two Italian civilians at an Italian military police base at Nasariya to the south. At least nine Iraqis were also killed. Other bombings, mortar attacks and shootings have killed Iraqi civilians, U.N. workers and coalition soldiers from nations including Britain, Bulgaria, Spain, Thailand and Ukraine.

The bombers Wednesday were stymied by defenses typical of those in place at military bases across Iraq. About 7:15 a.m., an Opel sedan and a pickup truck behind it ignored orders to stop at a checkpoint on a bumpy dirt road that leads to the base entrance from a neighborhood of closely packed houses, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.

The muddy, uneven road apparently impeded the bombers’ deadly rush toward the gate, officials said. As the vehicles sped up, guards opened fire, Manos said.

“Both drivers were shot,” Manos said. “The driver of the first vehicle crashed into a concrete barrier. The second vehicle crashed into him.”

The crashes are believed to have caused the explosions, Manos said.

At the time, many neighborhood residents were still in bed. Former Iraqi Col. Abdejmehdi Yassin, 43, said the area around the base once used by Saddam Hussein’s forces remains populated in large part by onetime military officers.

Yassin, whose house is about 100 yards from where the vehicles exploded, said he had just opened a book of interpretation of the Koran when he heard the first blast. His frightened children came running into his bedroom.

About 30 seconds later, a second, louder explosion shattered windows. Then the roof fell in.

“The ceiling hit me on the head, and I lost consciousness,” the beefy veteran said while lying in a hospital bed, his head bandaged. “I woke up in the car on the way to the hospital. I was vomiting. I was in the army for 20 years, but I never heard any explosion that strong.”

Yassin’s family was not hurt.

Yassin said the proximity of the base had made neighbors nervous about a possible attack in recent months. Relatives urged him to move. But he had little choice, he said, because he hasn’t had a job since the army was disbanded by occupation authorities.

Less fortunate were two families whose houses on the perimeter of the base were struck by a barrage of shrapnel.

In one house, rescuers found the bodies of a former major, his wife and their daughter, and in the other, a former brigadier and his wife and daughter, hospital director Taie said.

The image of families perishing in their beds epitomizes the callousness of the insurgents, whose attacks, even when aimed at the U.S. and its allies, show little mercy to Iraqis, Taie said.

“The people of Iraq have paid a lot for a very long time,” the doctor said. “It’s difficult to have more patients, to receive more catastrophes. The suicide bombers cannot reach the base, it is too well protected. Those who pay are the innocent people.”

The multiethnic contingent of troops stationed in Hillah under Polish command includes Lithuanians, Hungarians, Filipinos, Romanians and several other nationalities. The soldiers have been accessible to the community and have had a generally amicable relationship, Taie said.

“Anyone can go to the coalition forces for help and tell them their troubles, their sorrows,” he said. “And sometimes they help.”

At the fortified Iraqi police station a few blocks from the blast site, commanders had been bracing themselves for bloodshed after aborting a number of plots, said Maj. Khudair Ubaiys.

“Our borders are open, Al Qaeda people are coming in,” he said, hunched at his desk in uniform. “Most of these attacks have been done by foreign Arabs.”

The attack Wednesday may have teamed foreign suicide bombers with Iraqi accomplices, police said. A witness who lives next to the base told police he spoke to a driver who raised his suspicions about half an hour before the explosion, said Lt. Ali Mundher.

The driver told the witness in an Egyptian or Lebanese accent that he was working on a contract to pave the street, Mundher said. The witness saw the car again 10 minutes before the explosion. Police suspect the driver was one of the bombers.

“But we believe Baath Party people are cooperating with the foreigners,” Ubaiys said. “A foreign Arab is going to need help to operate here. He does not know the turf.”

U.S. authorities have said they believe that Al Qaeda and its affiliates are involved in the suicide bombings across Iraq. But they have been unable or unwilling to publicly identify suicide attackers or other suspects in bombing cases, making it hard to confirm the accusations.

Hardly anyone in the shrapnel-pocked streets of Hillah blamed Al Qaeda on Wednesday. Relatives of victims in the crowded hospital ward alleged that U.S. forces were behind the explosions as part of a vague plan to cause anarchy and retain power.

Rumors flew about an aircraft seen overhead, about a clandestine missile strike disguised as a car bombing.

Former Brig. Hamid Assam Esawi stood in front of his house around the corner from the blast site. He said he refused to believe the official version.

“The crater was too big, the shrapnel was too big,” he said. “I think it was a missile attack. I think their real target was this neighborhood, not the base. Who has missiles like that? The American Army.”

Elsewhere in Iraq on Wednesday, U.S. soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division arrested seven people they described as suspected members of the Al Qaeda network.

Acting on information that a cell of anti-coalition fighters was operating in the Baqubah area, the soldiers carried out a raid and arrested 22 suspects, including the seven alleged Al Qaeda network members, military officials said.