Suicide bomber blamed in attack

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. military said Wednesday that a suicide bomber likely carried out the explosion at a U.S. base near Mosul, spraying a crowded mess tent with small pellets and killing 22 people – nearly all of them Americans.

The announcement raised questions about how the attacker infiltrated the base, which is surrounded by blast walls and barbed wire and guarded by U.S. troops. However, as in many other U.S. military facilities, Iraqis do a variety of jobs at the base, including cleaning, cooking, construction and office duties.

The apparent sophistication of Tuesday’s operation – the deadliest single attack on U.S. troops since the war began – indicated the attacker probably had inside knowledge of the base’s layout and the soldiers’ schedule. The blast came at lunchtime.

“We have had a suicide bomber apparently strap something to his body … and go into a dining hall,” Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon. “We know how difficult this is to prevent people bent on suicide and stopping them.”

The 22 dead included 14 U.S. service members, four U.S. civilians, three Iraqi National Guard members, and one “unidentified non-U.S. person,” the U.S. military command in Baghdad said Wednesday evening.

Myers said authorities don’t know whether the unidentified person was the likely bomber.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, ground forces commander in Iraq, ordered an investigation. Troops found “no physical evidence of a rocket, mortar, or other type of indirect fire weapon,” according to a statement issued early Thursday by military authorities in Baghdad.

Initial reports said a rocket had ripped into the tent. Later, however, a radical Sunni Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility, saying it was a “martyrdom operation” – generally a reference to a suicide bomber.

Military officials in Iraq said Wednesday that shrapnel from the explosion included small ball bearings, which are often used in suicide bombings but are not usually part of shrapnel from rockets or mortars.

The attack sparked renewed concerns about the ability of U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies to secure elections Jan. 30. The military said they had expected an increase in violence as insurgents attempt to derail the vote for an assembly that will draft Iraq’s new constitution.

There was little apparent sympathy for the dead Americans on Mosul’s deserted streets, where hundreds of U.S. troops, backed up by armored vehicles and helicopters, blocked bridges and cordoned off Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq’s third-largest city.

“I wish that 2,000 U.S. soldiers were killed,” declared Jamal Mahmoud, a trade union official.