26 killed as blast destroys Italian police site in Iraq

Hours after the bombing, an American C-130 gunship pounded a suspected guerrilla base in Baghdad in an apparent counteroffensive after a week of nighttime mortar attacks in the heart of the capital. At least 15 loud explosions shook city at about 9:15 p.m. as the plane attacked a building that Pentagon officials described later as a "meeting point and storage area in southern Baghdad," used by guerrillas to plan armed attacks. Apache attack helicopters attacked a van in western Baghdad, killing two Iraqis said to have launched mortars against American soldiers.

In the Nasiriyah attack, a tanker truck packed with explosives rammed through a heavy cordon of Iraqi police and Italian paramilitary police, or Carabinieri, at about 10:40 a.m., outside the city's former Chamber of Commerce. The vehicle burst into a huge fireball after hitting a wall, and set off secondary explosions as stores of ammunition inside and numerous military vehicles outside caught fire. The four-story building was transformed into a charred skeleton.

The suicide attack inflicted the highest number of Italian military casualties since World War II, and the death toll from the bombing was the largest in a single attack against coalition forces from any country, the United States included. US forces suffered their worst single attack on Nov. 2 with the downing of a Chinook helicopter, which killed 16.

The Nasiriyah compound has housed about 2,500 Italian forces since they arrived in Iraq last June to support the American-led coalition. In contrast with the hostility directed toward American troops, the Italians apparently had built good relations with the people of Nasiriyah.

The attack appeared designed to warn American allies that they are unsafe anywhere in Iraq. Defense Minister Antonio Martino of Italy was quoted as saying in Rome that evidence on the ground and intelligence reports "lead us to believe that today's attack was planned and carried out by remnants loyal to Saddam [Hussein] . . . united with Arab extremists."

For hours after the blast, soldiers and firefighters frantically dug through the wreckage of one collapsed building in search of survivors, while ambulances screamed through the city, carrying bleeding victims to overstretched hospitals. About 79 people were injured, including 20 Italians, according to hospital officials in Nasiriyah, about 180 miles southeast of Baghdad. Officials said about 650 pounds of explosives had been packed into the truck.

In the chaotic aftermath, witnesses said they had seen a car shoot through the checkpoint that had blocked the square outside the building, apparently as a decoy to divert attention from the real attack. As Iraqi police and Italian forces opened fire on the car, the large suicide truck appeared from another direction and plowed through the gate, exploding as it hit a wall.

In a day of extraordinary bloodshed, there were casualties on all sides yesterday.

Five Iraqi civilians were killed near the flash-point town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, when American soldiers from the 82d Airborne Division opened fire on their car -- carrying live chickens -- after it overshot a US military cordon, relatives and hospital officials said.

Two American soldiers were also killed. One died when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Taiji, about 10 miles northwest of Baghdad. Another died of injuries sustained after an attack on Tuesday. Yesterday's attacks bring to 153 the number of Americans killed in attacks since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1.

In Italy, the aftershock of yesterday's suicide bomb was profound, as Italians awoke to the news of the biggest attack against their military since World War II.

"It's incredible, you cannot believe the shock to Italians," said Gianandrea Gaiani, a military analyst in Bologna, by telephone last night. "The government presented this mission to Italians as a peacekeeping operation. All Italians have suddenly woken up," said Gaiani, who visited Iraq in August. "We are not used to suffering in war," he said.

In a somber speech to Parliament in Rome, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appealed to his nation to unite in mourning, rather than vent its fury at the country's involvement in the occupation -- an unpopular policy among Italians. Despite calls by some opposition politicians to bring the troops back home, Berlusconi said he was determined to stay in the coalition.

"Our determination is the same," Berlusconi told Parliament. "No intimidation should derail us from our will to help this country to be free." Italy stayed out of the war after hundreds of thousands of Italians demonstrated last winter. The troops arrived only in June, once the US-led occupation was well underway. Among the dead Italians were at least 12 Carabinieri, four soldiers, a civilian worker, and a documentary filmmaker.

US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is due to fly to Asia next week to appeal to Japanese and South Korean officials to send troops to Iraq. US officials have said they regard it as crucial to broaden the US-led occupation, in order to share the financial cost of the conflict, as well as the task of halting months of violence.

With more than 60 coalition soldiers killed in the past 11 days alone, there is a gathering sense of urgency among US officials in Iraq about handing over power to Iraqis. After an emergency meeting with President Bush yesterday, the US administrator to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said that he would present Iraq's Governing Council with options to speed the transition.

Italian officials have described for months their military role as strictly humanitarian. Perhaps for that reason, their base was in the center of Nasiriyah, easily accessible to attackers, in stark contrast to the US bases close to Baghdad. Until yesterday, Nasiriyah had seen almost no violence since US Marines stormed through the city last March on their northward assault on Baghdad.

The Carabinieri, specialists in urban policing and crowd control, train Iraqi police in southern Iraq. In Baghdad, Italian diplomats have led the effort to recover the National Museum's ancient artifacts, many of which were looted as Hussein's government collapsed in April. The Italian ambassador to Iraq, Pietro Cordone, called the attack "a barbarous act" and said, "We came to Iraq to bring peace and stability."

Washington's allies in the coalition have, until now, largely avoided being dragged into the mounting insurgency of recent months. The first combat death of a non-American, non-British soldier occurred only last week, when a Polish Army major was killed in an ambush north of the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala. Twelve British soldiers have been killed since May 1.