30 killed in wave of violence by insurgents

SAMARRA, Iraq -- Thirty people were killed in a menacing wave of explosions and gunfire in this Sunni Triangle city Saturday, as insurgents sent a message that highly touted efforts by the U.S. military to quash them last month had fallen short.

The violence was a harbinger of the kind of attacks expected when U.S. Marines open their offensive in the rebel city of Fallujah in the coming days. U.S. diplomats, military officials and many Iraqis are girding for a rash of suicide bombings, shootings and mortar and rocket attacks throughout the dominantly Sunni areas of the country once that operation begins.

Reports are circulating among Iraqi and U.S. officials that large numbers of insurgents have already left the Fallujah area in anticipation of the coming invasion. The militants are reportedly fanning to other cities in the Sunni Triangle, where they will stage diversionary attacks -- and underscore that despite an expected defeat for insurgent forces in Fallujah, the rebel movement remains strong.

U.S. forces are poised to advance into Fallujah, where an estimated 1,000 to 6,000 insurgents, a mix of Saddam Hussein loyalists, Sunni Islamists and non-Iraqi supporters of Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, are holed up. The Marines are waiting for a signal from interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and President Bush to begin the attack.

"There will be horrific events outside Fallujah," said a senior U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I would never tell you that violence in Sunni areas won't get worse when you open up a battle."

He added that officials expect that period to last "not many weeks."

"You will have a shortish period when everybody will say the whole country's falling apart . . . but they (the insurgents) will not be able to maintain that tempo."

That is small comfort to the victims of the violence and civilians in Samarra who were terrified by the bombings and fighting. Saturday's attacks in Samarra appeared to have been coordinated, although U.S. Army spokesman Capt. Bill Coppernoll described them as "all in all not as coordinated as they (the insurgents) liked it to be."

A group led by Zarqawi reportedly claimed responsibility for the attacks, which came a month after U.S. military officials declared victory in its operation to rout the insurgents in the city. After that siege, which ended with moderate damage and relatively light casualties, U.S. military officials touted the battle as a model for quelling the insurgency in Iraq.

"What has to be done in that country is what basically was done in Samarra," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said after the operation.

The violence in Samarra began Saturday when a joint U.S. and Iraqi patrol spotted a suspected car bomb near the mayor's office, fired on it and saw it explode, according to a statement from 1st Infantry Division's Public Affairs office. An Iraqi National Guard checkpoint is near the mayor's office.

The vehicle appeared to be an Iraqi police truck stolen from the police station at Baji, about 40 miles to the north, according to the statement.

Almost simultaneously, mortar rounds rained on a Samarra police station, killing three policemen and wounding nine.

Then, a half-hour later, another car bomb exploded near a joint Iraqi and U.S. patrol on the eastern side of the city. The blast injured four soldiers from the Iraqi Interior Ministry's special police force, according to the 1st Infantry Division public affairs officer.

The next blast occurred at midday when a suicide bomber rammed a car into a police station, killing 10 Iraqi police officers and wounding five, according to police and witnesses on the scene.

Witnesses said U.S. troops in the city opened fire after the explosions and that there was chaos in the city center as bullets flew. Ambulances were unable to evacuate the dead and wounded immediately because of the danger, they said.

In all, 11 civilians and 19 police were killed in the day's violence in Samarra, according to the Reuters news service. It was unclear how the civilians and some of the police died.

Residents said the U.S. military declared a curfew that started at midday. Shaken residents fled the town, some joining family members who had already gone to the countryside. Ziad Ismail, 35, a Samarra native who owns a pastry shop here, said he was struggling to get to his family members who he had sent to the neighboring city of Al Dor on the other side of the Tigris but that American soldiers had closed the bridge and were shooting people who tried to use small boats to cross the river.

"I was able to hear sporadic gunfire on the streets, probably clashes between the U.S. forces and resistance fighters," he said. "Otherwise, the city is a ghost town, all the shops are closed, and there aren't any pedestrians."

Ismail added that he saw Iraqi soldiers patrolling with the U.S. forces as he left town. "There were also masked resistance fighters as I was making my way out of the city," he said.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces bombed Fallujah in one of the heaviest assaults in recent memory, according to residents. A warehouse used by the Fallujah hospital for medicines and surgical supplies was badly damaged, witnesses said.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy on the main airport road in Baghdad on Saturday, killing an Iraqi bystander and wounding three American soldiers, the military said. An Iraqi civilian also was seriously wounded. The airport road has been under attack almost daily for the past couple of months.

Television footage showed U.S. troops gathered around the smoldering wreckage of a vehicle on the wide grass strip dividing the lanes of the road.

In Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad., a car bomb targeting a U.S. Marine convoy wounded 20 troops. Hospital staff said at least one Iraqi was killed and 14 wounded in clashes between rebels and U.S. forces in Ramadi.

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