BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi insurgents detonated a car bomb and then hammered a military headquarters in the city of Samarra with a mortar barrage Thursday, leveling the building and killing five U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi guardsman, the U.S. military said.
American troops – backed by attack helicopters – then fanned out through the city to hunt down the attackers in clashes that lasted into the late afternoon. Tanks deployed in the streets; smoke rose above a mosque.
The violence also killed three civilians, medical officials said. As many as 44 people were wounded, including 20 American soldiers and four Iraqi guardsmen, the military and hospital officials said.
Also on Thursday, the Philippines prohibited its citizens from traveling to Iraq to work after militants released a videotape threatening to kill a Filipino hostage if the country did not withdraw its troops.
About 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Iraqi insurgents lashed out at U.S. forces in Samarra, a hotbed of anti-coalition resistance 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Neal O’Brien, the spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division.
One witness, Khalid Salih, said the gate of the headquarters building shared by U.S. forces and their Iraqi national guard allies was open when a sport utility vehicle rigged with a bomb drove in.
“I saw a GMC enter the base and immediately explode,” he said.
Insurgents then launched 38 mortars at the headquarters, destroying the building, O’Brien said. Some of the rounds landed in nearby residential neighborhoods.
About 25 minutes after the mortar attack – once radar determined where it had originated – U.S. soldiers responded with four mortar rounds of their own.
American troops moved through the streets to flush out the insurgents, and four fighters shot at the soldiers before taking refuge in a building, O’Brien said. U.S. helicopters swooped in and attacked with Hellfire missiles, killing the four attackers.
Before the attack Thursday, a U.S. military convoy in Samarra was targeted by a roadside bomb that wounded one U.S. soldier, O’Brien said.
In another attack, gunmen along the road from Samarra to Balad strafed a truck, killing two Turkish drivers and causing the vehicle to flip over, witnesses said. Insurgents have taken many truck drivers hostage in an effort to spread fear and disrupt supplies for U.S. forces.
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