Mortar Blast Wounds 35 U.S. Troops

[David]

Anti-American insurgents fired mortar rounds into a U.S. military camp Wednesday, wounding 35 U.S. soldiers, the U.S. command said.

Six mortar rounds impacted on Logistical Base Seitz, west of Baghdad in the "Sunni Triangle" about 6:45 p.m local time, a U.S. military spokesman said in a statement.

The wounded soldiers were from the 3rd Corps Support Command, a spokesman said.

"The wounded soldiers were given first aid and have been evacuated from the site for further medical treatment," the military statement said.

U.S. officials did not say whether any of the wounds were life-threatening or give further details. The statement did not give a precise location for the camp but a spokesman described it as "a living area where they have their sleeping quarters."

Earlier Wednesday, U.S. troops said they destroyed a home in Fallujah, the center of the anti-American insurgency west of Baghdad, where enraged neighbors said a married couple was killed and their five children were orphaned.

They insisted the couple were innocent in an attack on the troops that led them to shell the house.

"This is democracy? These corpses?" neighbor Raad Majeed asked at the hospital, gesturing at the remains of the couple, on gurneys covered with bloody sheets. "It's a crime against humanity."

In other developments:


In Kirkuk, insurgents hit an Iraqi police vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade. Iraqi police say one officer was killed and two were wounded, and a rocket-propelled grenade exploded into the headquarters of the Kurdistan Socialist Party, injuring one person but doing little damage.


Iraq hid from United Nations inspectors some preliminary plans to develop banned weapons, but a U.S. survey team has found no evidence of weapons stockpiles or active weapons-building programs, a newspaper reports.


Pentagon official defended moves to keep troops in Iraq, including an order barring retirements and a $10,000 reenlistment bonus, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Bagnato. "We are a nation at war," said Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Richard Myers.


Families of 101st Airborne Division soldiers waved American flags and yelled "thank you" as the division's first planeload of troops from Iraq stepped off the plane Wednesday after nearly a year at war. Fifty-nine soldiers from Fort Campbell, the 101st's home, have been killed in the war ? more deaths in Iraq than any other military unit.


The U.S.-led occupation authority plans to take part in meetings between Iraqi leaders and the United Nations. The authority must decide how strong a mandate to give the U.N. in the country's move to self-rule: a lead political role in the election process, or strictly humanitarian aid and refugee issues.


Bush administration officials say politics had nothing to do with a decision to award a second contract worth $1.8 billion to rebuild Iraq to Bechtel. Bechtel executives gave thousands of dollars to President Bush's 2000 election campaign and two of the company's top executives serve on advisory boards to the White House and the Defense Department.

The 82nd Airborne Division said its paratroopers acted after receiving "two rounds of indirect fire" around 9 p.m. local time Tuesday.

"Paratroopers from our Task Force engaged the point of origin with a grenade launcher and small arms, causing two personnel to flee into a nearby building, which was also engaged and destroyed," division spokeswoman Capt. Tammy Galloway said in a statement.

"The building was searched and no weapons or personnel were found. Upon questioning, civilians in the area reported two dead personnel were taken to a nearby hospital," the statement said.

Civilian deaths in the counterinsurgency campaign have enraged many Iraqis at a time when the U.S.-led coalition is trying to win popular support. On Wednesday, the coalition announced it was freeing 506 of 12,800 prisoners in a goodwill gesture also aimed at encouraging more Iraqis to come forward with intelligence against anti-American guerrillas.

Officials offered rewards for the capture or information confirming the deaths of 30 more wanted Iraqis, putting bounties of $50,000 to $200,000 on their head. That is in addition bounties for the 13 remaining fugitives at large from the original 55 most wanted Iraqis whose pictures appeared on a deck of cards.

There's a bounty of $10 million on the head of the most wanted man since Saddam Hussein's capture, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of the ousted dictator's chief lieutenants.

In Fallujah, neighbors said U.S. soldiers were on a routine search for suspects and arms when they were fired on. The paratroopers then fired at the house of Ahmed Hassan Faroud.

Associated Press Television News film showed a wall of the house collapsed into a rubble of concrete bricks and two walls splattered with blood that neighbors said belonged to Hassan, 37, and his wife Suham Omar, 28. They said the couple's five children were in bed in an adjoining room and survived Tuesday night's attack uninjured. Fallujah is about 30 miles west of Baghdad, the capital.

"They just brought in their tank and fired at their house from 220 yards away," Majeed said. "What did these people do wrong?"

Tuesday's attack came as coalition officials said they would become "increasingly aggressive with the die-hards," while simultaneously making conciliatory gestures to moderates or fence-sitters.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a British soldier died in a training accident in southern Basra, bringing the toll for British troops to 53, a British military spokesman said.

Syria's vice president on Wednesday accused Israel of trying to divide Iraq. Syria, Turkey and Iran all are concerned that Kurds may start demanding an independent state to include parts of their countries that hold Kurdish populations.

"The most dangerous thing that threatens Iraq is that some foreign forces, particularly Israel, are seeking to break up (Iraqi) national unity," Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam told reporters after meeting with an Iraqi tribal delegation.

The Iraqi delegation, from the large Jbour tribe, called on all international forces to work to "rid Iraq of the (U.S.-led) occupation and prevent partition, sectarianism and racism in the country."