G.I. Killed and Two Wounded by Mortar Fire at Iraq Base

January 4, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 3 — Insurgents firing mortar shells into an American base about 60 miles north of Baghdad killed one soldier on Saturday and wounded two others, a United States military spokesman said. In a separate attack in the capital, insurgents opened fire on an American convoy, killing two soldiers, the military said. The shooting quickly followed a bomb explosion in the Rashid district.

The mortar fire struck a base of the Fourth Infantry Division near Balad, a town close to the main northern artery road linking Baghdad to Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit. A former Iraqi air base outside Balad has been converted into the main American air base here, but it was not clear from the initial reports whether the mortar attack had hit the airfield or an ancillary base.

The American spokesman, Master Sgt. Robert Cargie, said that one mortar shell had exploded near one of the trailers that are commonly used by troops in Iraq as sleeping quarters, and that a soldier standing in the doorway had been killed.

The latest deaths raised the number of Americans killed in combat in Iraq since American military operations began in March to 331, of whom 216 have died since major combat operations ended on May 1.

A list compiled by Reuters, based on an updated death toll provided by the Pentagon on Jan. 1, gave the number of Americans who have died of noncombat causes as 153, of whom 130 have died since May 1. Noncombat deaths have included about 15 suicides among the 120,000 American troops, as well as from motor vehicle accidents on crowded highways.

Britain, America's main ally in the war, was listed as having lost 52 soldiers, 32 of them from noncombat causes. Other countries in the 32-nation alliance have lost 35 soldiers or military policemen, according to the Reuters list.

Estimates of the number of Iraqi military and civilian casualties in the war have been difficult to compile, and vary widely. But the Reuters list, based on estimates by human rights groups and other independent groups monitoring the war, ranged from nearly 13,000 to more than 16,000 Iraqis killed. Of those, civilians accounted for an estimated 8,000 to 10,000.

The main base at Balad, scene of Saturday's fatal mortar attack, has rapidly expanded to become the largest American military camp in Iraq. An old Iraqi air base that was heavily used in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's, it has replaced Baghdad's main airport, formerly Saddam International Airport, as the main transit point for American troops and cargo reaching Iraq.

American commanders judged the Balad base better situated for the American troops who are based across a wide region north of Baghdad, as well as units garrisoned in the center of the country around Baghdad, and also for those in the west out to the borders with Syria and Jordan, and south of Baghdad to a point about a third of the way between Baghdad and the main southern city of Basra, which serves as Britain's main base.

Security conditions also weighed in Balad's favor, as Baghdad's airport proved to be vulnerable to ground-to-air missile attacks by insurgents, as well as mortar fire.

The region in and around Baghdad continued to be the scene of one of the most intensive American offensives of the war on Saturday, in an effort to build on the success of Mr. Hussein's capture by demoralizing the insurgents and persuading them that their cause is lost.

On Friday night and until nearly dawn on Saturday, Baghdad resounded to a cacophony of warfare that made it hard for anybody watching and listening from a balcony at the Palestine Hotel near the city center to reconcile the bedlam with the phrase some American officers still prefer for the hostilities here: "a low-intensity conflict."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company