2 U.S. soldiers meet grisly end at hands of Iraqi mob

MOSUL, Iraq — Assailants killed two U.S. soldiers riding in a civilian car yesterday in this northern city and, in a bloody scene, crowds then reportedly mutilated their bodies, trashed the vehicle and made off with the soldiers' belongings.

The 101st Airborne Division, which is responsible for an area of northern Iraq that includes Mosul, said the two men were shot while driving between garrisons. Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language satellite news network based in Dubai, reported the men were stabbed while their vehicle was at a stop.

Some witnesses said they may have been shot, then stabbed before their throats were cut, though another said the neck wounds appeared to have been caused by bullets.

Witnesses said a swarm of what appeared to be mostly teenagers descended on the vehicle after the attack, looting it of weapons and the soldiers' backpacks.

About a dozen teenagers dragged the soldiers out of the wreckage and beat them with concrete blocks, one witness said. "They lifted a block and hit them with it on the face," said Younis Mahmoud, 19.

It was unknown whether the soldiers were alive or dead when pulled from the wreckage.

Another witness, teenager Bahaa Jassim, said, "The crowd remained there for over an hour without the Americans knowing anything about it. I ... went and told other troops."

The frenzy recalled the October 1993 scene in Somalia, when locals dragged the bodies of Army soldiers killed in fighting with warlords through the streets after 18 Americans were killed following the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter. The United States withdrew its troops from Somalia soon afterward.

The U.S. military would not elaborate on how the two soldiers died, saying it was against policy to divulge details of injuries.

"We're not going to get ghoulish about this," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations in Iraq.

The soldiers' deaths came shortly after insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as a 4th Infantry Division convoy passed in Baqouba, just north of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding two others, the military said.

The deaths brought to 183 the number of U.S. soldiers killed since May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat had ended in Iraq.

November has been one of the bloodiest months since the guerrilla campaign began — for U.S. soldiers, allied multinational troops, Iraqi security forces and civilians.

The attack in Mosul came a day after suicide bombers detonated cars packed with explosives outside Baqouba's police headquarters and a police station in the nearby town of Bani Sad. U.S. officials said 17 Iraqis were killed in the bombings, most of them police officers. The Iraqi police are seen by the U.S. administration as key to restoring stability.

While the attacks have remained most intense in towns such as Baqouba in the Sunni Triangle, a region that long served as a pillar of Saddam Hussein's rule, attacks have mounted elsewhere against Iraqis cooperating with U.S. officials.

Kimmitt said the Iraqi police chief in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, and two officers were killed yesterday when the car in which they were riding was attacked by small-arms fire. Saturday, in Mosul, assailants shot and killed an Iraqi police colonel, Abdul-Salam Qanbar, who was in charge of a force protecting oil installations.

Despite the surge in both the scope and ferocity of the attacks, Kimmitt dismissed any threat posed by the guerrillas, whom he described as occasionally clever but overall "a pretty poor group of insurgents.

"We have nothing at this point that causes us to be concerned," he said. "This is not an enemy that can defeat us militarily."

The daylight attack in Mosul was the latest sign of unrest in the predominantly Sunni Muslim city that had remained relatively quiet after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam's government in April.

The killing of the two soldiers comes eight days after two Black Hawk helicopters crashed in a residential Mosul neighborhood — apparently while under enemy fire — costing the lives of 17 U.S. troops.

Even before the latest deaths, a sharp rise in attacks had rocked this city of 1.7 million and forced U.S. troops back onto a war footing after months of focusing on economic and political development.

In Mosul, troops in the past week have raided suspected opposition hide-outs, conducted hundreds of house-to-house searches and dispatched U.S.-trained Iraqi troops into 10 mosques — once a taboo. The raids have yielded numerous arms caches and resulted in the detention of more than 100 men suspected in anti-U.S. activities.

Among those detained, the United States says, are two suspected al-Qaida operatives, both Iraqi citizens; an insurgent who sought to send a woman with a bomb to a police station; and a veteran criminal implicated in a plot to assassinate Col. Joe Anderson at his base near downtown.

"They (Iraqis) don't understand being nice," said Anderson, who oversees the military zone that includes Mosul and environs and doesn't hide his irritation after months dedicated to restoring the city.

"We spent so long here working with kid gloves, but the average Iraqi guy will tell you, 'The only thing people respect here is violence. ... They only understand being shot at, being killed. That's the culture.' ... Nice guys do finish last here."

While Mosul had been a notorious stronghold of the former Baath regime, U.S. troops stationed here had been able to spend much of their time refurbishing schools and factories, jump-starting civic life and handing out Beanie Babies and soccer balls.

The Army pumped more than $30 million in seized ex-regime funds into hundreds of redevelopment projects, from road and sewer repairs to school renovations and restoration of the power grid.

U.S. forces also helped set up a new police force, fire department and city council, overseeing a caucus process that saw the election of an Arab mayor and council representing Kurds, Christians and other minority groups — widely hailed as the first stab at representative government in post-invasion Iraq.

Compiled from The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press.

Information in this article, originally published November 24, was corrected November 26. A previous version of this story about two soldiers being killed in their vehicle in Mosul, Iraq, referred to the deaths of "Marines" who were drug through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. The Somalia victims were Army soldiers, not Marines.