Suicide bombers attack at sea

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Suicide attackers detonated explosive-laden boats near oil facilities in the Persian Gulf Saturday, killing two U.S. sailors in a new tactic against Iraq’s vital oil industry. Elsewhere, violence across Iraq killed at least 33 Iraqis and four American soldiers.

It was the first such maritime attack against oil facilities since U.S. troops invaded Iraq more than a year ago. The blasts resembled attacks in 2000 and 2002 – blamed on al-Qaida – against the USS Cole and a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen that killed 17 American sailors and a tanker crewman.

In the attack, three dhows, or small boats, drew close to two major oil terminals in Gulf waters about 100 miles from Iraq’s main port, Umm Qasr, and exploded when coalition craft tried to intercept them. A U.S. Navy craft was flipped by the blast, killing the American sailors and injuring five others, the U.S. military said.

Initial reports said there was no damage to the terminals, the military said, and Umm Qasr remained open, a British spokesman said.

The Gulf bombings came on a day of multiple attacks in Iraq: The deadliest was a roadside bomb that hit a bus south of Baghdad, killing at least 13 Iraqis. A mortar barrage struck a crowded market in the capital’s biggest Shiite neighborhood, Sadr City, killing at least seven.

The U.S. soldiers were killed around dawn, when two rockets were fired from a truck and slammed into the base in Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, the military said. U.S. helicopter gunships then destroyed the truck. Seven soldiers were wounded, three of them critically, the military said.

The latest deaths, along with the combat death of a Marine announced Saturday, brought to 108 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of April. The military announced the death of a soldier in a non-combat incident, bringing to 717 the number servicemembers who have died in the country.

Anywhere from 900 to 1,200 Iraqis have been killed in April – depending on various reports of the death toll from Fallujah.

Iraq is currently producing about 2 million barrels of oil a day, according to the Middle East Economic Survey.

In Sadr City, the capital’s sprawling Shiite slum, angry residents vented anger at Iraq’s U.S. occupiers after the mortar attacks, which followed an early morning clash in the neighborhood between U.S. troops and militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Some of the mortar shells in Saturday’s barrage against Sadr City, which killed at least seven people, hit two miles from any U.S. position – suggesting they may have deliberately targeted civilians in the Shiite neighborhood.