14 Marines Are Killed in Iraq Blast

A massive roadside bomb ripped through a lightly armored Marine personnel carrier Wednesday in western Iraq, killing 14 troops and a civilian interpreter in one of the deadliest single attacks on U.S. forces since the war began.

The blast near the town of Haditha brought to 21 the number of Marines killed in three days in western Iraq. Fighting escalated in the area recently after Army Gen. George W. Casey, the top American commander in the country, ordered U.S. forces to gain control of Iraq’s border with Syria by November. Last month, 1,800 troops were sent to set up the first long-term U.S. base in the region.

Military officials have complained that insurgents smuggle foreign fighters and weapons into Iraq from Syria, and have called on the Syrian government to clamp down. Now American forces are trying to stem the flow on the Iraqi side of the border, and their increased presence in the region is being met with fierce resistance from insurgents who had considered the region a safe haven, U.S. commanders said.

On Monday, gunmen outside Haditha ambushed and killed six Marines, members of a sniper team who were on a mission to search for insurgents laying makeshift bombs. Also that day, a car bomb claimed another Marine in nearby Hit. The 14 troops and the interpreter killed Wednesday near Haditha were on a mission to clear guerrillas from the desert. Many of the Marines slain this week were with the same reservist company from Brook Park, Ohio.

Wednesday’s blast overturned the Marines’ amphibious assault vehicle. Because the escape hatches are on top, it would have been difficult for the Marines to get out of the burning vehicle, a senior defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. One Marine was reportedly rescued.

The makeshift bomb was the largest such device U.S. forces have encountered in western Iraq, said a Marine official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.

Increasing the toll of the bomb is the fact the Marines’ larger vehicles can carry more people than those of the Army, which would divide a crew of about the same size into two Bradley fighting vehicles or Stryker personnel carriers.

Although the amphibious vehicles were designed to storm beachheads, the Marines use the lightly armored personnel carriers to ferry troops in the Iraqi desert.

John Pike, a defense analyst with globalsecurity.org, said the amphibious vehicles were designed to protect troops against shrapnel from a distant artillery burst as well as from gunfire. But like Bradleys, they cannot withstand an almost direct hit from an artillery shell.

“The only vehicle that will do that is an Abrams tank,” Pike said.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham told reporters at the Pentagon that the insurgents were an “adaptive enemy” that had responded rapidly to increased American protective plating with bigger and more sophisticated explosives designed to puncture armor.

“It’s fairly well understood that coalition forces are making a concerted effort to protect personnel and vehicles throughout the country as they are moving, and the enemy is seeking ways to counter that increased protected effort,” Ham said.

Insurgents have also figured out how to detonate explosives in ways that have eluded the military’s electronic jamming technology, which is designed to block the signals that set off roadside bombs. In some cases, guerrillas have given up on wireless devices such as cellphones or garage-door openers and instead rigged a long wire to the bomb and set it off by hand from a safe distance.

It was not immediately known how the bomb was detonated Wednesday, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility. The militant group Ansar al Sunna had claimed responsibility for Monday’s ambush of Marines.

On Wednesday, the group posted a video on the Internet purportedly showing the aftermath of the Monday incident. In the footage, an attacker uses a knife to cut the dog tag from around a dead Marine’s neck. The video also shows what appears to be gear taken from the Marines, including guns, backpacks and ammunition cartridges.

In a statement, Ansar al Sunna said the insurgents had planned to capture the Marines alive, “but they opened fire on the mujahedin.... The heroes slaughtered those who were still alive ... except for one, who begged the mujahedin for his life. They captured him and he is in our hands.”

At the Pentagon, Ham said no Marines were missing. American officials have said that one of the six Marines was found dead a couple of miles from the site of the ambush, but it was unclear whether he had been captured alive and later killed.

The operation in western Iraq is aimed at cutting off the flow of foreign fighters, money, explosives and other weapons from Syria. Though military officials agree that most insurgents are Iraqis and that foreign fighters make up less than 10% of the insurgency, foreigners are said to play a prominent role in the larger, more lethal explosive attacks.

“Most of the [guerrillas] that we run into live in the Euphrates River valley someplace,” Marine Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, commander of coalition forces in western Iraq, said in a recent interview in Fallouja. “All these other external forces -- the religious forces, the anti-Iraqi forces, the criminals -- I tend to believe that they’re the vast minority, and they use these other guys as foot soldiers.

“Our position is that it’s a predominantly Sunni insurgency.”

At least 1,816 U.S. troops have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to the Pentagon.

The bombing Wednesday was among the most lethal incidents involving U.S. troops.

Thirty Marines and one sailor were killed in January when their helicopter crashed in bad weather in western Iraq. In December, a suicide bombing in a military mess tent near Mosul killed 14 U.S. soldiers and eight others. In November 2003, three downed helicopters in two incidents claimed the lives of 33 American troops.

With violence in Iraq continuing more than two years after the war began, recent polls have shown a decline in American public support, and lawmakers have increasingly urged President Bush to set a timetable for a pullout of troops.

Dismissing those suggestions, as he has before, Bush said Wednesday that the United States should honor its war dead by refusing to bow to pressure to set a deadline for withdrawal.

“We’re at war. We’re facing an enemy that is ruthless. If we put out a timetable, the enemy would adjust their tactics,” Bush said in a speech to the American Legislative Exchange Council meeting in Grapevine, Texas. “The timetable depends on our ability to train the Iraqis, to get the Iraqis ready to fight, and then our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.”

American forces will withdraw from Iraq “as soon as possible, but not before the mission is complete,” he said.

Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said Americans were likely to accept the president’s approach, despite growing public discontent with the war.

“It is another bad moment, and a very bad one, but George Bush won reelection last year despite many such bad moments,” said O’Hanlon, who favors a publicly announced strategy to begin reducing U.S. forces next year.

“Americans will tough this out because in their eyes the alternative is a defeat they consider neither inevitable nor acceptable,” he said.

The Marines who were killed Monday and Wednesday were all assigned to Regimental Combat Team 2 of the 2nd Marine Division.

The Pentagon identified the six Marines killed by small-arms fire Monday in Haditha as Cpl. Jeffrey A. Boskovitch, 25, of Seven Hills, Ohio; Lance Cpl. Roger D. Castleberry Jr., 26, of Austin, Texas; Sgt. David J. Coullard, 32, of Glastonbury, Conn.; Lance Cpl. Daniel N. Deyarmin Jr., 22, of Tallmadge, Ohio; Lance Cpl. Brian P. Montgomery, 26, of Willoughby, Ohio, and Sgt. Nathaniel S. Rock, 26, of Toronto, Ohio.

Also Wednesday, the military announced that Army Staff Sgt. James D. McNaughton, 27, of Middle Village, N.Y., died Tuesday in Baghdad when he was struck by sniper fire in a guard tower.

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Multiple fatalities

The attack near Haditha was one of the deadliest for U.S. troops since the war began. Some of the incidents with a high number of American fatalities include:

Aug. 3, 2005: Marine amphibious assault vehicle strikes a roadside bomb in western Iraq, killing 14 Marines.

June 23, 2005: Suicide car bomber slams into Marine convoy in Fallouja, killing five Marines and a sailor.

Jan. 26, 2005: Helicopter crashes in bad weather near Rutbah, killing 30 Marines and one sailor.

Jan. 6, 2005: Roadside bomb kills seven U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.

Dec. 21, 2004: Suicide bomb attack in a mess tent on a base near Mosul kills 14 troops.

Sept. 6, 2004: Suicide attacker detonates an explosives-packed vehicle next to U.S. military convoy outside Fallouja, killing seven Marines.

April 29, 2004: Eight U.S. soldiers clearing explosives from road are killed by car bomb in Mahmoudiya.

Nov. 15, 2003: Two Black Hawk helicopters collide near Mosul, killing 17.

Nov. 2, 2003: Chinook transport helicopter is shot down by shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile near Fallouja, killing 16.

March 23, 2003: Eleven troops are killed in the ambush of a convoy near Nasiriya.

Sources: Times reports, Associated Press

Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti at the Pentagon and Edwin Chen in Grapevine contributed to this report.