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Massacre in Mosul: Blast claims ‘many brave souls’

Dec-22-2004 » Filed Under: TF Olympia

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MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

The explosion rocked Forward Operating Base Marez at its most vulnerable point – the huge plastic-and-aluminum chow hall, where thousands of soldiers converge for meals four times each day.

The structure is a good mile inside the base perimeter, as big as a football field and surrounded by 10-foot concrete barriers. The only thing shielding its big white roof against the near-daily incoming rockets and mortars has been the Iraqi insurgency’s erratic marksmanship.

U.S. military officials said at least 22 people were killed and more than 60 wounded Tuesday in an explosion at the dining hall in the northern city of Mosul.

In terms of total casualties, it is the single worst day for U.S. troops since the invasion in March 2003.

Pentagon officials said the blast was likely from a 122 mm rocket. An Islamic militant group claimed credit and said it was a “martyrdom operation.”

American officials said they’d called in a team of ordnance experts to investigate.

An undisclosed number of Fort Lewis soldiers are among the dead and wounded, officials said. About 2,000 local troops from the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division are stationed at the former Iraqi military base at the southern end of Mosul.

“Today we lost many brave souls. This was a mass casualty operation and it will take time to get it exactly right,” said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, spokesman for U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

The governor of Maine said two soldiers from his state’s National Guard were killed. An embedded reporter from a Virginia newspaper reported that two guardsmen from that state died.

A spokeswoman for the Halliburton Co., whose subsidiary runs the dining facility, said seven of its employees were among those killed.


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