Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat

BAGHDAD, 29 October 2003 — A car bomb exploded yesterday near a police station on a major street in the tense city of Fallujah, killing at least six people, police said. The attack came hours after four American soldiers were wounded in ambushes in northern Iraq.

Later yesterday, eight massive explosions were heard after sundown in Fallujah, coming from the southern area of the city. US officials in Baghdad said they were unaware of the explosions, which residents described as “deafening.”

Violence continued a day after suicide bombers struck the Red Cross headquarters and three police stations in Baghdad, killing about three dozen people and causing foreign organizations to weigh their role in the insurgency-plagued nation.

It appeared the attacks were directed at Iraqis who work with the US occupation, although US officials were uncertain what group was responsible.

US President George W. Bush blamed the wave of violence in post-war Iraq in part on “foreign terrorists,” and said he expected Syria and Iran to enforce border controls to stop infiltrators.

Bush vowed that the United States would not “crater in the face of hardship,” and said those behind the suicide bombings had the “same mentality” as those who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

“We’re constantly looking at the enemy and adjusting,” Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference in the aftermath of Monday’s blood bath in Baghdad.

“We’re not leaving,” Bush said.

“(Saddam Hussein’s deposed) Baathists try to create chaos and fear because they realize that a free Iraq will deny them the excessive privileges they had under Saddam Hussein,” Bush said.

An official of the US-led occupation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said yesterday he couldn’t confirm Iraqi police reports that a man captured after a failed bombing attempt Monday was a Syrian.

The official said the man claimed he was Syrian and was in possession of a Syrian passport. Investigators are trying to determine whether the document is authentic, the official said.

Yesterday’s bomb in Fallujah, 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, was in a Toyota that exploded in front of a power station and about 30 meters from a school and 100 meters from a police station, witness Hamid Ali said. The target was unclear.

Tawfiq Mijbel, who was badly injured by shrapnel, said he had been driving directly behind the vehicle that exploded. “It stopped in front of the power company. A man got out, while another stayed in the car. A few seconds later it blew up,” Mijbel said from his hospital bed.

The school was closed, but police said one unidentified body was found inside. Police Col. Jalal Sabri said all the victims appeared to have been bystanders.

US troops arrived about 20 minutes after the blast and cordoned off the area. To the north near Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city which has been relatively peaceful, two US patrols were ambushed Monday night.

One soldier was wounded when insurgents attacked his convoy in southeastern Mosul and three others were wounded, one seriously, when their patrol was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the town of Tal Afar, just west of Mosul, the US command said.

A rocket-propelled grenade attack on Monday killed a US soldier and wounded six others in Baghdad, the US military in Iraq said yesterday.

A spokesman said the troops from the US Army’s 1st Armored Division came under attack while destroying “improvised explosive devices”.

— Additional input from agencies