Post by Moses on Aug 3, 2005 7:01:47 GMT -5
36 minutes ago
Fourteen Marines were killed in a roadside bomb blast in western Iraq on Wednesday, the U.S. military said, in one of the single deadliest attacks against U.S. forces since the beginning of the war.
The bomb exploded near a Marine amphibious assault vehicle as it was traveling south of Haditha, a town on the Euphrates river about 200 km (120 miles) northwest of Baghdad. A civilian translator was also killed. One Marine was wounded.
It is the second major deadly attack against Marines in the area in the past three days. On Monday, six Marines were killed in clashes with insurgents in Haditha, and a seventh was killed by a car bomb blast in Hit, southeast of the town.
The western Anbar province of Iraq is the heartland of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and has been one of the deadliest regions for U.S. forces since they invaded in March 2003. The towns of Falluja and Ramadi are also in Anbar.
In December last year, 22 people were killed, including 14 U.S. servicemen, when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mess hall at a military base in the northern city of Mosul. That was the deadliest attack on a U.S. installation since the war.
At least 1,820 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war. In the past month, more than 60 have died, many of them in Anbar. U.S. forces have launched two major offensives in the area since May to try to crush insurgents.