Major Assault Launched Against Samarra

U.S. and Iraqi forces today made an aggressive attempt to recapture the Iraqi city of Samarra, thrusting thousands of U.S. troops into the rebel stronghold while killing dozens of insurgent fighters.

The assault was part of U.S. efforts to oust insurgents from rebellious towns such as Samarra and help the Iraqi government regain control over those areas.

With the nation’s first democratic elections planned for January, Iraq and the U.S. have begun stepping up their campaign against insurgents in hopes of preventing disruption of the vote.

The U.S. military said one U.S. soldier and nearly 100 insurgents were killed in the fighting, and more than 100 injured were brought to the hospital, officials said.

Thousands of troops advanced shortly after midnight into Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, facing small arms fire from rebels. By this afternoon, coalition forces controlled about 80% of the city, Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry spokesman, told the Associated Press.

The military’s move came one day after a string of suicide car bombings ripped through an impoverished Baghdad suburb as residents celebrated the opening of a U.S.-funded sewage facility, killing 35 children and at least seven other Iraqis.

Many of the children were killed after they rushed to see the damage from the first explosion. They were caught in two subsequent suicide attacks that apparently targeted U.S. soldiers and Iraqi national guard officers responding to the first blast, witnesses said.

It was believed to be the deadliest attack involving children since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Hysterical mothers still bleeding from their own wounds beat their heads and pulled at their hair, grieving over lost children. Victims lay in the street, tugging at the lifeless bodies of loved ones. Charred pieces of one bomb rested near the twisted remains of two red bicycles, whose wheels were decorated with colorful features and plastic balls.

“I picked up the body of my grandson,” said Rashid Salih, 67, who lives near the blast site. “He was cut in half. I didn’t recognize him.”

Ten U.S. soldiers were wounded, two seriously, authorities said.

Yesterday across Iraq, there were other violent bombings. In Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, rammed a checkpoint, killing a U.S. soldier and two Iraqi policemen. With the soldier’s death at least 76 U.S. servicemen have been killed in September, the third-deadliest month for the American military since the war began.

A car bomb in the northern city of Tall Afar also killed four Iraqis and wounded 60, and a gunman in nearby Mosul assassinated a local police chief. In Baghdad, a soldier with the U.S.-led coalition was killed when militants fired rockets at a military base near the international airport.

And two days after kidnappers freed seven hostages, including two Italian aid workers, the Arab satellite TV channel Al Jazeera broadcast a video purporting to show 10 new hostages — six Iraqis, two Indonesian women and two Lebanese men.

Sanders reported from Baghdad and Strickland from Los Angeles. Times special correspondents Raheem Salman and Suhail Ahmed of The Times Baghdad bureau contributed to this report, along with Associated Press.