ATTACKS: At Least 26 Killed in a Bombing of an Italian Compound in Iraq

November 13, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS

NASIRIYA, Iraq, Nov. 12 — A car or truck bomb exploded in the courtyard of an Italian paramilitary police headquarters in this southern Iraqi city on Wednesday, killing 17 Italians and at least 9 Iraqis and wounding more than 105 others. It was the most lethal single attack on forces of the American-led occupation since Saddam Hussein was swept from power in April.
[The Associated Press reported Thursday morning that the death toll had risen to 32.]

The bomb exploded at 10:40 a.m. local time, ripping apart the three-story building and an annex that stand beside a broad stretch of the Euphrates river in the center of Nasiriya, 180 miles south of Baghdad. The lightly protected buildings, formerly the city's Chamber of Commerce, served as offices and accommodation for 200 members of the Carabinieri, the Italian military police force, and most were in the buildings at the time of the attack.

"A truck crashed into the entrance of the military police unit, closely followed by a car which detonated," a spokeswoman for the British-led multinational force in southern Iraq said shortly after the blast.

An Iraqi witness said he saw a blue-and-white Russian-built truck approach the building at high speed along a boulevard leading to the river, with a bearded man in the front passenger seat firing at Italian guards before the vehicle swung past the guards and a line of low, earth-filled barriers before exploding.

There were no claims of responsibility for the attack, the latest in a series that have struck at not only Americans but other foreigners and the Iraqis that support them. Earlier targets have included the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Jordanian Embassy.

Hours after the blast, American forces launched a pair of ferocious strikes against suspected loyalists of Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad, signaling a new and more aggressive strategy.

In Nasiriya, the force of the bombing of the Italian compound left a crater 50 yards from the main building that was more than 50 feet across and 10 feet deep. The front and side of the building was sheered off, with iron beds, desks and other equipment and personal belongings strewn in the wreckage.

Ammunition stored in the building exploded, and vehicles in an adjacent parking lot caught fire, sending a huge plume of flame and smoke curling for hours into the clear autumn air. A wide area around the site was immediately sealed off by Italian and Romanian troops.

Many of the Italians killed and wounded in the attack had been due to head back to Italy at midweek, at the end of a four-month stint.

In addition to the dead, there were 20 Italians among the wounded. At the Nasiriya hospital, doctors said 85 Iraqis had been injured, 30 seriously. They said the dead included three schoolgirls of about 10 who died in a passing minibus, as well as a 10-day-old infant whose mother survived. At least 10 of the injured Iraqis were women and children.

In Rome, Italy's defense minister, Antonio Martino, blamed loyalists of Mr. Hussein for the attack but presented no evidence to support his claim. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said Italy would not be shaken from its commitment to Iraq and the United States.

An Italian official representing the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-led governing body, told reporters 12 hours after the blast that its force left little that was immediately identifiable from any vehicle or attacker. Whether the attack was carried out by a car and a truck, or only one vehicle, was in doubt, the official, Andrea Angeli, said.

He said the Italians killed were 11 military police officers, 4 soldiers and 2 civilians, one a television documentary filmmaker.

Attacks have killed more than 40 American soldiers since the beginning of November, and a total of 154 Americans since President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, contributing to a sense of crisis in Washington as administration officials seek ways to stabilize the situation.

The immediate question raised by Wednesday's bombing was how it would affect the United States' faltering efforts to draw other nations into committing troops and police to the occupation forces.

American officials say 33 nations are represented in the occupation effort, but an American diplomatic drive to draw contingents from Muslim nations like Turkey and Pakistan has failed, and several nations in Europe, including France and Germany, have also refused. Italy's role has been prized by Washington in the face of broad European resistance.

Among international agencies seeking to bring relief to Iraq's 22 million people, morale has been battered by the bombings of the United Nations headquarters in August, which killed 22 people, and the blast that struck the Baghdad compound of the International Red Cross late last month, killing at least 12. Both organizations have ordered all non-Iraqi personnel to leave Baghdad.

The attack on Wednesday was followed by reassurances for Washington from nations that have said that they will send troops here. In Portugal, which had pledged to replace some of the Italian paramilitary troops who were the target of the bombing, officials said plans to send 128 police officers to Iraq were unaltered. But opposition parties demanded that Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso's conservative government review the plan, which has drawn limited support in Portuguese opinion polls.

Poland, which has 2,500 soldiers in Iraq, mostly in the British-led southern sector of the country, said that its troops would stay. The Polish units suffered the country's first combat death since World War II when a Polish soldier died in an Iraqi ambush last week.

For the occupation forces, the bombing was a disturbing change in the pattern of suicide attacks, which have been mainly concentrated in Baghdad and other cities in the central part of Iraq, close to the centers of Sunni Muslim population that were the core of support for Mr. Hussein's government.

But the most lethal of all the bomb attacks, outside a Muslim shrine in the city of Najaf in August, which killed more than 80 people, including one of the country's leading Shiite Muslim clerics, occurred in a city with a majority Shiite population.

Until Wednesday, Nasiriya had been something of a model for the occupation forces. Although paramilitary forces loyal to Mr. Hussein put up a fierce resistance at Nasiriya to American troops pushing north to Baghdad during the war to overthrow Mr. Hussein, the city has been mostly quiet for months. It was garrisoned first by marines, and then by Italians and Romanians. Iraqis interviewed across the city after Wednesday's blast that the occupation forces had been broadly popular, riding a wave of gratitude for ridding the country of Mr. Hussein.

It was a marked contrast to the Sunni cities of central Iraq like Falluja, Ramadi and Tikrit, where attacks on the Americans have drawn cheering crowds. That was the pattern last week, when two American helicopters were shot down, killing 22 American soldiers. In those areas, Mr. Hussein remains a hero.

In Nasiriya, the common attitude was grief for the Italians and support for the occupation forces. Reporters were assured that the attackers had to have come from the north, or perhaps from Islamic fundamentalist groups elsewhere in southern Iraq. On street corners, and in homes as much as a mile from the blast where doors were blown out and wrought-iron window grills buckled, people competed with one another to say that they did not want the attacks to drive coalition forces from Iraq. They were also proud of the role played by doctors at the Nasiriya hospital, where most of the wounded were taken, in treating Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was taken prisoner after her maintenance unit was ambushed outside Nasiriya during the war and rescued in a helicopter raid. On Wednesday, many people asked after her.

Italian officers and officials lingered deep into the night outside the bombed buildings' shattered hulks. They said that the attack was a terrible blow for Italy, which had taken great pride in the role its military police had played in Bosnia and Kosovo, and in Albania. "Our policy has been to be quite open, and to have a genuine dialogue with the people," said Mr. Angeli, the spokesman for the occupation authority. "This is a real tragedy."