Baghdad, Iraq – Fourteen U.S. Marines were killed Wednesday when a huge bomb destroyed their lightly armored troop carrier, hurling it into the air in a giant fireball in the deadliest roadside bombing suffered by American forces in the Iraq war.
A civilian translator also was killed, and one Marine was wounded. The dead were from the same Ohio-based Reserve unit as five of six members of a Marine sniper team killed Monday in an ambush claimed by the Islamic extremist Ansar al-Sunnah Army.
The deaths brought to 23 the number of Marines killed in the past week in fighting along the Euphrates Valley of western Iraq and marked one of the bloodiest periods for U.S. forces in months. In all, 44 American service members have died in Iraq since July 24 – all but two in combat.
The troop carrier, which looks like a large boat with wheels, was designed for amphibious assaults and carries only light armor. Even so, the vehicles are the Marines’ primary means of transporting troops and cargo across the desert landscape in western Iraq.
The Marines were part of a convoy that was attacked on a desert road outside the western town of Hadithah, one witness told The Washington Post.
Rolling in armored vehicle after armored vehicle, the patrol was nearing the entrance to the town when a brilliant flash erupted in the middle of the convoy.
“Huge fire and dust rose from the place of the explosion,” said Saad Mijbil, a motorist who said he witnessed the bombing and was hospitalized with bullet wounds sustained in the chaotic aftermath.
The bomb blew apart the armored personnel carrier and ignited its load of fuel and explosives. Though he was 80 yards away, Mijbil said, the blast was strong enough to break the rear window of his pickup truck.
A Marine officer, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the armored amphibious vehicles were to assault a longtime way station for foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq from Syria. After the blast, the surviving Marine scrambled from beneath the overturned vehicle, the officer said.
The Marines killed Wednesday were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, based in Brook Park, a Cleveland suburb, and attached to the Regimental Combat Team-2. Nine of them were from a single smaller unit in Columbus.
President Bush lamented the deaths of the 14 Marines, calling the attack a “grim reminder” America is still at war.
“These terrorists and insurgents will use brutal tactics because they’re trying to shake the will of the United States of America. They want us to retreat,” Bush told 2,000 lawmakers, business leaders and public-policy experts in Grapevine, Texas.
American commanders have warned that while insurgent bombings have been declining in number, they have been increasing in power and sophistication.
Villagers reached by telephone said the blast blew the vehicle into pieces, and a large crater could be seen nearby.
“This is a very lethal and unfortunately very adaptable enemy we are faced with,” said Army Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, a Pentagon staff officer and former commander of U.S. forces in Mosul.
Hadithah is one of a string of cities along the Euphrates River that American commanders believe forms the network that shuttles insurgents traveling through Syria into Baghdad and other parts of the Iraqi heartland.
The Marines have launched a series of operations in recent months to bring the area under firmer control and to choke off the flow of insurgents. But success has been elusive.
On Wednesday, the website of the Ansar al-Sunnah Army posted photographs from Monday’s attack on the Marine sniper team. One picture shows a bloody, battered body wearing Marine camouflage trousers. Another shows two hooded gunmen standing in front of several rifles, apparently taken from dead Marines.
In a statement, Ansar al-Sunnah said the insurgents lured the Marines out of their base and ambushed them.
The Washington Post and The New York Times contributed to this report.
