BAGHDAD, Iraq – An al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber blew up his vehicle Monday near cars waiting to enter the Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and Iraq’s interim government, killing 13 Iraqis.
Two Marines were reported killed today in Anbar province, the U.S. military reported.
Seven Marines died in action Sunday in the volatile Anbar province west of Baghdad. Earlier reports that eight Marines died were attributed to confusion over whether a Marine who died earlier in the day had been added to the total.
A U.S. soldier with the 1st Corps Support Command was killed and another wounded Monday in a vehicle accident near a military base in Balad, 50 miles north of the capital.
As insurgents continued to step up attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces ahead of next month’s elections, the country’s interim president said Washington was wrong to dismantle Iraq’s security forces, including its 350,000-strong army, after last year’s invasion.
“Definitely dissolving the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior was a big mistake,” Ghazi al-Yawer told British Broadcasting Corp. radio, saying it would have been more effective to screen out former regime loyalists than to rebuild from scratch.
He added: “As soon as we have efficient security forces that we can depend on, we can see the beginning of the withdrawal of forces from our friends and partners, and I think it doesn’t take years, it will take months.”
U.S. military commanders, however, say American forces will be in Iraq for several years and that troop numbers will rise from 138,000 to 150,000 before the Jan. 30 national elections.
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq group claimed credit for Monday’s deadly attack in central Baghdad, where a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives-packed car near a checkpoint leading into the heavily fortified Green Zone, killing 13 Iraqis and wounding 15. No U.S. troops were injured.
In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb blast struck a U.S. Stryker brigade patrol Monday, wounding two American soldiers. U.S. troops and gunmen fought gun battles after the blast.
In Tarmiyah, on Baghdad’s northern outskirts, three more U.S. troops were wounded in a car bombing that wrecked two Humvees, pieces of which were raised into the air by jubilant Iraqi men who danced around their charred hulks and a large crater blown into the road.
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