Bomb kills 14 Marines as insurgents step up tactics

BAGHDAD -- A massive bomb tore through a US troop carrier near the western town of Haditha yesterday, killing 14 Marine reservists in the deadliest roadside attack of the war against US forces. The deaths brought to 21 the number of Marines killed in the region over the past three days.

Yesterday's bombing, which also claimed the life of an Iraqi interpreter, was the latest display of the more sophisticated insurgent weapons and deadlier tactics that US commanders have warned about for months, top military officials said.

Forty-three US soldiers and Marines have been killed across Iraq over the past week and a half. Most of the recent deaths have occurred in volatile western Anbar province, where US and Iraqi forces have been fighting to root out insurgent strongholds in the vast terrain stretching hundred of miles between Baghdad and the porous Syrian border. The US military believes the area is a key pipeline for the insurgency and foreign extremists.

The Marines were driving on a road early yesterday when their armored vehicle was struck by a massive bomb, powerful enough to blow apart the amphibious assault vehicle, which weighs more than 25 tons. The carrier, capable of carrying 18 combat-ready Marines and designed to plunge into the surf and travel over rough terrain, is not as fortified as a tank, but is nevertheless highly protected with thick armor plates.

All 15 victims in yesterday's attack were riding in the same vehicle, military officials said. One Marine survived and is undergoing treatment for injuries, they said.

The attack occurred about a mile south of Haditha, located 130 miles northwest of Baghdad. It took place near where seven other Marines from the same unit -- the Third Battalion, 25th Marines, based outside Cleveland -- were shot to death in an ambush Monday. The body of one of those Marines was found mutilated several miles away, according to wire service reports.

The American deaths in western Iraq came after US casualty figures had been going down, from 83 in June to 58 in July. Military leaders in Iraq and Washington were quick to stress yesterday that the latest attacks do not necessarily mark an overall escalation in the insurgency. They said US and Iraqi forces have been mounting more aggressive operations against insurgents in western Iraq who have been infiltrating fighters into Baghdad along the Euphrates River valley.

There have been ''a number of [US-led] operations in a number of those towns simultaneously, in an effort to deny the enemy freedom of movement, to deny them safe haven," Army Brigadier General Carter Ham, director of regional operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon. ''They don't have that freedom of movement, and I think that's one of the contributing causes to these number of direct contacts that are occurring," as US forces encroach on territory where insurgents had been moving freely.

Since the US invasion of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in November, Marines in Anbar have been trying to clamp down on the movement of fighters into Iraq from Syria, and have fought several pitched battles in towns where insurgents have had free rein.

But the insurgency has grown increasingly sophisticated, despite US and Iraqi efforts to stem the ambushes, suicide bombers, and improvised explosives that have claimed the lives of at least 1,822 American military personnel since the 2003 US-led invasion. Ham said the insurgents' tactics have become more deadly, including assembling larger explosives that have the ability to penetrate even some of the better-protected military vehicles.

''We have seen over the past few months a general decline in the number of improvised explosive attacks. . . . But the lethality has remained very, very high," Ham said.

''We are seeing larger amounts of explosives. We are seeing different techniques that are being used in an effort to counter the efforts of coalition and Iraqi security forces to protect folks while they are moving; different types of [explosive] penetrators, different techniques of triggering the events."

These tactics have been on display in Anbar in particular, which has remained one of the most unstable parts of the country.

In the attack on Monday, insurgents wielding machine guns attacked a Marine foot patrol. Five Marines were killed immediately, and the body of a sixth was found later, more than a mile away. A website for a leading insurgent group, Ansar Al Sunna, yesterday posted photos on the Internet purporting to be of the dead US Marine. The military said it was investigating the report.

Another Marine was killed the same day in a suicide bombing in Hit, 85 miles northwest of Baghdad. Marines detained 10 individuals in a raid yesterday on a suspected terrorist safe house near Haditha, officials said.

The attacks this week followed a series of roadside bombings and ambushes last month in Anbar and Baghdad that targeted US Marines and soldiers. Military officials expressed concern yesterday that the recent deaths will suggest that the insurgency is getting worse.

''The hard part that we cannot control is the false perception that . . . one or two attacks over the last couple of days in Haditha will cause people to assume that the sky is falling," Army Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, a military spokesman in Baghdad, told the Globe via e-mail. ''All that has happened at this stage is that the terrorists have been unfortunately successful in two attacks, which does not in and of itself signify anything more than what it is."

Nevertheless, top officers hold no illusions that the insurgency is anywhere near defeat. ''I think [it is] very important to always remember that this is a very lethal and, unfortunately, adaptive enemy that we are faced with inside Iraq," Ham said.

President Bush did not directly comment on the latest US casualties. But during a speech before the American Legislative Exchange Council in Grapevine, Texas, he declared: ''Their families can know that American citizens pray for them, and the families can know that we will honor their loved ones' sacrifice by completing the mission, by laying the foundation for peace for generations to come."

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad insisted earlier this week that ending the insurgency can be achieved only through political means.

''The solution to the problem of the insurgency is not a military solution alone," Khalilzad told reporters Tuesday.

''In order to defeat the insurgency, one needs to reach a compact with all Iraqis," he said. ''If they see themselves as part of this new Iraq they would separate themselves from the insurgency."

Bender reported from Washington and Cambanis from Baghdad.