More Than 1,800 US Military Killed
in Iraq Since Invasion

14 Marines Killed by Roadside Bomb in West Iraq City

DEXTER FILKINS and ERIC SCHMITT / New York Times 4aug2005

[More below]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 3 — Fourteen marines were killed Wednesday when their troop carrier was blown up by a huge roadside bomb in the western town of Haditha, in one of the deadliest attacks on American troops since the invasion in March 2003. An Iraqi civilian interpreter working with the marines was also killed in the blast.

American officers said the marines had been riding in an amphibious troop carrier during combat operations on the southern edge of the city at dawn on Wednesday when the bomb exploded. The blast flipped the 25-ton troop carrier and caused it to burst into flames. One marine was seriously wounded; everyone else on board died.

The troop carrier, which looks like a large boat with wheels, was designed for amphibious assaults and carries only light armor. Even so, the vehicles are the marines' primary means of transporting troops and cargo across the desert landscape of western Iraq.

The attack brought the number of marines killed in Haditha to 20 in less than two days. On Monday, guerrillas ambushed and killed a group of six American snipers who were moving through the area on foot. The snipers had been deployed to hunt down and shoot insurgents trying to plant roadside bombs like the one that exploded Wednesday. Most of the dead have been from the same reserve unit, the Third Battalion, 25th Marines, based in Brook Park, Ohio, near Cleveland.

Haditha is one of a string of cities along the Euphrates River that American commanders believe forms the network that shuttles insurgents traveling through Syria into Baghdad and other parts of the Iraqi heartland.

The marines have begun a series of operations in recent months to bring the area under firmer control and to choke off the flow of insurgents. But success has been elusive.

The insurgent group Ansar al Sunna claimed responsibility for the ambush that killed the American snipers on Monday and said in an Internet posting on Wednesday that it had captured one of the marines alive. The group claimed that it had killed eight Americans altogether, and that its fighters had beheaded some of the Americans who were still alive after the ambush.

There was no way to verify the claim that the group had taken an American prisoner, and the posting did not contain any video or photographs. The group said a video of their prisoner was forthcoming.

Later in the day, however, Ansar al Sunna posted a video that seemed to depict the attack on the snipers. The video shows what appears to be two Humvees moving across the top of a desert ridge, and then, at different times, six distant figures walking in the desert off the road.

"These are the crusaders," a caption on the video says.

Then a voice can be heard chanting "God is great!" while three masked men firing mortar shells from atop a dune, though it does not show what they hit. The video shows what appears to be a dead American serviceman, his shirtless body burned and mangled.

The video offers a close-up of the man's lifeless face. Then a pair of hands reach down and cut the dog tag from around his neck. The camera zooms in on the tag, but it is not readable.

The closing frames of the video show an array of what appears to be captured American military equipment, including machine guns and M-40 sniper rifles with scopes.

"Pray for us," a caption says at the end.

At a news conference at the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, a military spokesman, denied that any marines were being held by insurgents, saying that all of them had been accounted for. He said here was "no indication" that any of the marines killed on Monday had been beheaded.

American commanders did acknowledge that one of the marines caught in Monday's ambush had become separated from the others, and that his body was not found until later, about a mile away from the scene of the ambush. That suggested that it was at least possible that one of the marines had been captured alive by the insurgents and killed later. General Ham did not rule out that possibility.

"We just don't know what happened," General Ham said.

The Pentagon on Wednesday identified the six dead marine snipers: Cpl. Jeffrey A. Boskovitch, 25, of Seven Hills, Ohio; Lance Cpl. Roger D. Castleberry Jr., 26, of Austin, Tex.; Sgt. David J. Coullard, 32, of Glastonbury, Conn.; Lance Cpl. Daniel N. Deyarmin Jr., 22, of Tallmadge, Ohio; Lance Cpl. Brian P. Montgomery, 26, of Willoughby, Ohio; and Sgt. Nathaniel S. Rock, 26, of Toronto, Ohio.

A note sent out late Wednesday by the marines in Iraq mentioned the existence of the video claiming to show the dead American marine. The note said the marines were trying to determine whether it was authentic.

"We are sorry that the family of the person shown in the video might be subjected to such images," the unsigned note said. "This disregard for all human life - Iraqi or American, men, women and even children - is a trait of the criminals and insurgents we are fighting."

In the Internet posting, Ansar al Sunna said the insurgents had lain in wait for the Americans for nine days, stepping up attacks on a nearby base in order to draw them into an ambush. The American base is near the Haditha Dam on the Euphrates, a huge structure built during Saddam Hussein's rule.

"The American marines fell into the trap," the posting said.

As soon as the Americans got out of their vehicles, the message said, the insurgents surrounded them and ordered them to surrender. The posting said the Americans started shooting, so the insurgents returned fire.

That statement was inconsistent with what was later shown on the video.

"After the attack the mujahedeen reached the marines, and some of them were dead and the others were dying, so they beheaded those who were still alive except for one, because he was not injured in the head," the message said. "So they took him a prisoner."

On Tuesday, The Associated Press quoted witnesses in Haditha as saying that masked men had gone to town's central market and handed out fliers boasting of the attack and displaying American military equipment they said had been taken from the dead marines.

In talking about the attack on Wednesday, General Ham said it was not clear whether the explosive was a mine, set off on impact, or whether it was detonated remotely or by a timer.

"We have seen over the past few months a general decline in the number of improvised explosive device attacks," he said. "In volume they've decreased, but the lethality has remained very, very high."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on Wednesday.

The attack comes after at least half a dozen American military offensives in Haditha and other parts of Anbar Province to shut down that insurgent network. The previous operations have been met with little resistance; the guerrillas have seemed to melt away, only to mount attacks later on.

But an American officer said Wednesday that the most recent operation might have been having some success, prompting the insurgents to strike back. The Americans set up a base in Rawah, on the north side of the Euphrates near the Syrian border, and moved an additional 1,600 American and Iraqi troops to the area, substantially hindering the movement of insurgents on both sides of the river, the American officer said.

General Ham said he thought the attacks this week were a reaction to the new operations, which had begun to hamper the guerrillas' freedom of movement, if not sharply weaken them.

"This is a very lethal and unfortunately adaptive enemy that we are faced with inside Iraq," General Ham said. "The changing of techniques over time is a challenge for us."

The attack on Wednesday was among the worst on American troops since the 2003 invasion. Last December, a suicide bomber struck a mess hall at an American base near Mosul and killed 14 American servicemen and 4 American contractors. In April 2004, a dozen marines were killed when they were attacked in the city of Ramadi.

Another marine was killed Monday in the city of Hit when a suicide bomber drove his car into a convoy and blew himself up. Hit is about 50 miles southeast of Haditha.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/international/middleeast/04iraq.html?pagewanted=print 4aug205

Iraq Casualties Hit Hard in a Suburb of Cleveland

JAMES DAO / New York Times 4aug2005

BROOK PARK, Ohio, Aug. 3 — This blue-collar suburb of Cleveland has sent many of its young to war, and it is no stranger to death. But this week was harder than just about any in memory, people said Wednesday.

On Monday, five marines from a reserve battalion that has its headquarters here were killed in an ambush in western Iraq. By Wednesday morning, the names of the dead were still trickling out, leaving hundreds of residents in anguish about friends and loved ones. For in Brook Park, almost everyone knows someone in the war.

For nearly 36 hours, Mayor Mark J. Elliott wondered about one of his best friend's sons. Officer George Sakellakis of the Brook Park Police Department worried about a colleague. And Helen Keller's stomach tied itself into knots every time she thought about the reservists she had baked cookies for, sent care packages to and coddled like a surrogate mother over the years.

Their worst fears did not come true. But others were not so lucky. The dead included marines like Cpl. Jeffrey A. Boskovitch, 25, the oldest of three children in a family who grew up in nearby Parma and was quarterback on the Normandy High School football team there. "We didn't have a chance to tell him to his face that he did a great job," said his uncle, Paul Boskovitch.

And then Wednesday brought more bad news: 14 marines from the same battalion, the Third of the 25th Marines, were killed when a bomb ripped apart their armored troop carrier in western Iraq. While those marines were attached to a company based in Columbus, military officials said, the fact that they were part of the same battalion hit Brook Park like a follow-up punch.

"It's all family," said Mrs. Keller, 64, the wife of a former marine. "Even if they don't know the person who has died, people here feel like it was their brother."

Though most of the marine reservists did not live in Brook Park, a city of 21,000 that lies in the shadow of Cleveland's airport, many were known in town, marching in Memorial Day parades, working out at the city recreation center, eating breakfast at the Place to Be Deli across Smith Road from the reserve headquarters.

More important, the unit itself had become a source of pride and honor for the town, which in addition to a sprawling Ford engine plant, is also home to an Army National Guard station and has many war veterans.

"There is something deeply American about that community," said Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat who represents the town. "So when a blow of this enormity hits, it is absolutely staggering. Brook Park is a community whose heart is just broken right now."

Corporal Boskovitch joined the Marine Reserves in 2000 and he was not nervous about going to war for the first time when the battalion deployed to Iraq in January, his uncle said. Indeed, Corporal Boskovitch believed strongly he was helping the Iraqi people, and even learned a bit of Arabic while he was there.

But he also wrote e-mail messages home in recent weeks expressing concerns about an influx of foreign fighters into Iraq. "He said, 'Things are changing here. There are faces I have not seen and there's a different attitude,' " Mr. Boskovitch said.

Corporal Boskovitch was engaged to a longtime girlfriend and they were thinking about getting married after he returned from Iraq, in October they hoped.

The other marines who died in the town of Haditha on Monday included Sgt. David J. Coullard, 32, of Glastonbury, Conn.; Lance Cpl. Daniel N. Deyarmin Jr., 22, of Tallmadge, Ohio; Lance Cpl. Brian P. Montgomery, 26, of Willoughby, Ohio, and Sgt. Nathaniel S. Rock, 26, of Toronto, Ohio. A sixth marine who died with the group, Lance Cpl. Roger D. Castleberry Jr., 26, of Austin, Tex., was attached to a different battalion, the Department of Defense said.

Although the Third Battalion has lost nearly 50 marines in the Iraq war, this week was by far the most bloody for the unit. The roadside bombing that killed 14 marines on Wednesday was also among the most deadly combat incidents for the Marine Corps since the war began.

Sergeant Rock's sister, Nicole Sneaghen, said that from the time he was a teenager he was fascinated by the marines, asking her husband, also a marine, to bring him camouflage pants, ready-to-eat meals and face paint so he could play war.

"He was born to be a marine," she said. "He loved everything about it."

Sergeant Rock planned to start a full-time job with the Police Department in Martins Ferry, Ohio, when he returned from Iraq this fall, she said. He wrote home frequently, assuring her that he would be safe. His calm tone made it all the more painful when she was notified of his death late Monday afternoon.

"We knew the consequences of him going, but it's still the worst thing that can happen to any family," Ms. Sneaghen said. "He was so young and talked about coming home and finding a girlfriend and getting married and having babies."

Sergeant Coullard joined the marines in 1994 after graduating from high school in Glastonbury, Conn., said his mother, Anita Dziedzic of East Hartford. As a reservist, he installed heating and air-conditioning systems. But he seemed to crave action, Ms. Dziedzic said, and he became a sniper who was shot twice before he was killed on Monday.

"He was a trouper," Ms. Dziedzic said, alternating between tears and smiles as she recalled her only son, later adding, "I was kind of in charge of his P.R., of getting him the recognition he deserved since he'd never seek it himself."

At the battalion headquarters, a reconfigured school building, residents had laid bouquets of roses, photographs of dead marines and six plastic foam crosses adorned with red, white and blue carnations.

Despite the pallor that seemed to hang over much of the town, Lt. Col. Kevin Rush, the senior officer at the headquarters, said marines in the battalion had set aside their shock and grief to do their jobs.

"Everyone who joined this battalion knew what they were getting into," Colonel Rush, 40, said. "Marines are the tip of the spear. The people we shoot at are going to shoot back."

Officer Sakellakis, 27, said that several friends had been sent to Iraq, including one with the Third Battalion, and that he believed they had been deeply shaken by the deaths this week. But Officer Sakellakis, a former Army reservist who served in Iraq, said he also believed it was easier to look beyond one's grief on the battlefield than it was for people back home.

"There, they have to go out and do their job the next day," he said. "Here, we have time to think about it, which I think makes it much worse."

Mayor Elliott, 47, said that for all Brook Park's experience with war, this week's death toll had shed a harsh new light on the war in Iraq, bringing home bloodshed that had seemed distant to some. For that reason, he said he thought some residents might begin to question the continuing American military presence in Iraq.

"When it hits home this much, I would expect people to say: 'How many more lives do we have to lose before we get our troops back home?' " he said.

Charles Keller, a former marine who is married to Helen Keller, said he also worried that people would turn against the war effort. But opposing the war now would dishonor the sacrifice of the marines from the Third Battalion, he said.

"We don't want our guys over there, either," Mr. Keller, 71, said. "But what are you going to do? We're either going to have to fight the terrorists over there, or fight them over here."

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article; Stacey Stowe from East Hartford, Conn., and Katie Zezima from Boston.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/national/04marines.html 4aug2005