Suicide attack injures British bomb experts

[MegaWorks]

Richard Lloyd Parry of the Times with the British press pool in Camp Dogwood, Iraq
Monday November 8, 2004

Two British soldiers were gravely injured by a suicide car bomb yesterday as troops of the Black Watch regiment moved to the rebel-dominated east bank of the river Euphrates in a fruitless attempt to capture insurgent guerrillas and weapons.

The casualties will raise fresh concerns about the British deployment, which has been questioned by its own commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel James Cowan.

The men were both bomb disposal experts attached to the Black Watch battlegroup. They were sitting in the back hatch of their open Warrior armoured vehicle on the west bank of the Euphrates when a car drove towards them and exploded.

They were treated on the spot and flown in US helicopters to an American field hospital in Baghdad.

It was the second suicide bomb attack against British soldiers in central Iraq in the space of three days.

Last Thursday three Black Watch soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed, and eight were injured, when a car bomber drove into a check point on the east bank of the Euphrates.

Another Black Watch soldier died 10 days ago when his armoured car rolled over during the treacherous journey from the British headquarters in the southern city of Basra.

But despite five deaths and 10 injuries, the Black Watch have made little progress in their objectives of combating banditry, gathering intelligence, and intercepting guerrillas on the supply routes to and from the rebel-held city of Falluja.

So far, Col Cowan has been vindicated in his judgement, expressed in a private email leaked to the Daily Telegraph last month that "every lunatic terrorist from miles around [will] descend on us like bees to honey". He added: "I hope the government knows what it has got itself into. I'm not sure they fully appreciate the risks."

Yesterday's operation was not Col Cowan's idea. It was ordered by the men who command him, the officers of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, led by Colonel Rob Johnson. It involved all three companies and most of the soldiers of the 800-strong battlegroup.

The object was two-fold: to block off routes used by insurgents, channelling them into mobile roadblocks; and to set up Forward Operating Base Springfield, a temporary position on the east side of the Euphrates.

The base was successfully established but, within hours, it came under rocket and mortar fire. And despite an elaborate arrangement of intercepts and roadblocks, the operation failed to net any guerrillas or their weapons.

All three companies of the Black Watch battalion were involved, as well as a platoon of the Queen's Dragoon Guards in Scimitar light tanks who fanned out across the deserts to the west of Dogwood.

Before dawn yesterday a lone piper walked nervously across the Jurf al-Sukhr bridge, which links the west and east banks, playing a lament for the three soldiers who died three days earlier.

Once the bridge had been secured, a second company of Warrior armoured cars moved over and blocked a road on one of the "rat runs" linking Falluja to Baghdad and to the lawless towns of the so-called "Triangle of Death" - Latifiya, Iskandariya and Mahmudiya.

Two and a half hours later, at 9.20am, the suicide bomb brought new victims. Word of the casualties spread quickly. Two young privates trembled visibly as they listened to the radio traffic in the back of their Warrior.

A third company set up Forward Operating Base Springfield in an abandoned industrial complex and almost immediately came under fire from incoming missiles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq...0,2763,1345787,00.html