Baghdad, Iraq – The U.S. military announced Tuesday that 10 American soldiers were killed in Iraq on Memorial Day, making May the deadliest month for U.S. troops in 2 1/2 years, as insurgents continued attacks on official and civilian targets.
Gunmen dressed in police uniforms staged a well-coordinated kidnapping at Iraq’s Finance Ministry, abducting five people whom the British Foreign Office identified as British citizens.
Two vehicle bombings in Baghdad left at least 44 people dead and 74 wounded. And the bodies of 32 men – all shot and tortured, some handcuffed and blindfolded – were found in two locations north and south of the capital Tuesday, a senior Iraqi security official said.
U.S. officials have warned that a strategy of putting more U.S. troops on the streets and in small combat outposts, part of a new security plan launched in February, would lead to higher casualties.
But Tuesday’s carnage suggested that the plan had not yet created a safer security environment.
Also, the complex operations launched against U.S. and coalition forces Monday and Tuesday demonstrated that the insurgency here also is adopting more sophisticated tactics and weapons.
Eight of the U.S. fatalities Monday occurred in the same incident: a U.S. helicopter crashed in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killing two soldiers, and insurgents then ambushed a rapid response team that was rushing to rescue them, killing another six with a barrage of roadside bombs, said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman.
“They are an adaptive, difficult enemy with an ability to change tactics to adapt to what’s happening on the ground,” Garver said.
Similar ambush tactics were used in a kidnapping on May 12, he said, when insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol, killing four soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter, and then were able to escape with three U.S. soldiers as prisoners because quick reaction teams encountered multiple roadside bombs that delayed their getting to the scene. One of the abducted soldiers was later found dead, and two remain missing.
In the case of the helicopter crash, Garver said, it was unclear whether the roadside bombs were there beforehand or were put in place there after the helicopter went down. He said the cause of the crash was under investigation.
Provincial police Capt. Muhannad al-Bawi said it was shot down near Muqdadiyah, about 50 miles northeast of the capital. A spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group with ties to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, asserted responsibility for the downing in a phone interview.
In recent months, Diyala has become one of Iraq’s most restive provinces, as members of Al-Qaeda in Iraq have expanded their operations there. About 3,000 troops from the new U.S. build-up were sent to Diyala to help quell the violence.
Most of the 28,500 additional troops being sent to Iraq are to be stationed in high-visibility posts in and around Baghdad, to heighten the sense of security and lower the rate of violence, U.S. officials hope, although they say the new troop buildup needs more time to prove whether it can be successful.
“Generally speaking, we are operating with more troops on the ground, in more areas than before – especially in places we haven’t been before – and that creates the potential for more contact between us and the enemy that can lead to more casualties,” Garver said.
While the short-term risks of having so many more troops on the streets are high, Garver said, in the long run “that’s going to bring more stability. Being out with the Iraqi forces and earning the confidence of the people will lead to better cooperation with the population and separate them from the insurgents and make sure they’re on our side.”
Two more soldiers were killed Monday by a roadside bomb in south Baghdad, the military reported.
U.S. fatalities for the month stand at 113, according to an Associated Press count, making it the third-deadliest month of the war.
Meanwhile, the British Foreign office mobilized its crisis management task force, dubbed COBRA, to respond to the kidnapping of five British citizens from the Iraq Finance Ministry shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Brig. Gen. Abdul Mareem Khalaf, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the abductions occurred when 19 vehicles sped into the Finance Ministry compound in north Baghdad and launched a well-planned kidnapping operation. A second Interior Ministry official said the men in the vehicles were all dressed in National Police uniforms.
Joe Gavaghan, a spokesman for GardaWorld, a Montreal- based security company, said in a telephone interview that four of the company’s security guards and a client were abducted in the raid.
About 300 foreigners have been abducted since the start of the war, and of those 54 were killed, 157 gained freedom, and the fate of 89 is unknown, according to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index.
In recent months, however, the number of foreigners kidnapped in Iraq has dropped.
