US says suspected suicide bomber probably wore Iraqi uniform

BAGHDAD -- The suicide bomber believed to have blown himself up in a US military dining tent near Mosul this week, killing more than 20 people, was probably wearing an Iraqi military uniform, the US military said yesterday.

The top US general in northern Iraq said that the bomber may have gotten through the vetting process conducted by US and Iraqi authorities to check the backgrounds of Iraqis joining the security services.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, spokesman for Task Force Olympia in Mosul, said a general officer will be flying in from headquarters in Baghdad to take over the investigation into how the devastating attack on the base near Mosul was carried out. The FBI is also participating in the probe. "He'll initiate an investigation, . . . then we will be in a better position to find out what happened," Hastings said in a telephone interview.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army, the military group that earlier claimed responsibility for the attack, issued a new statement reiterating that it was a suicide bombing.

"God enabled one of your martyr brothers to plunge into God's enemies inside their forts, killing and injuring hundreds," the group said in a statement posted on its website yesterday. "We don't know how they can be so stupid that until now they have not figured out the type of the strike that hit them."

The blast on Tuesday was the deadliest single attack on a US base, hitting the dining tent at lunchtime and killing 14 US service members, four American civilians, three Iraqi National Guard members, and one "unidentified non-US person." Military officials have said it is not yet known whether that final death was the suicide bomber.

"From preliminary indications of the damage, it looks like the guy [the suicide bomber] was wearing an Iraqi military uniform," Hastings said, adding that it seemed like a "vest-type of explosive."

Investigators had still not determined whether the attacker was working on the base or whether he had managed to infiltrate it, Hastings said.

Reports earlier yesterday indicated that security had been boosted in at least several US bases and other facilities following the suicide bombing. Hastings said that armed guards were posted at the entrances and exits from dining halls and other communal areas at his base in northern Mosul.