A workshop believed to be producing chemical munitions exploded in flames Monday moments after U.S. troops broke in to search it, killing two soldiers and wounding five. Jubilant Iraqis swarmed over the Americans' charred Humvees, waving looted machine guns, a bandolier and a helmet. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt did not say what sort of chemical agents were suspected of being supplied to insurgents from the Baghdad warehouse. After the blast, there was no sign of precautions against chemicals. ''Chemical munitions could mean any number of things,'' including smoke grenades, he said.
The cause of the Baghdad warehouse blast was unclear. Kimmitt said a large number of explosives were in the building, located in the northern neighborhood of Waziriyah. Asked about reports that the search team included members of the Iraq Survey Group the U.S. team looking for weapons of mass destruction Kimmitt said only: ''The inspection was by a number of coalition forces.'' He said the owner of the site was ''suspected of producing and supplying chemical agents'' to Iraqi insurgents, but did not elaborate.
The blast leveled the front half of the one-story building and set ablaze four Humvees parked outside. A U.S. soldier was taken away on a stretcher, her chest and face severely burned. Several Iraqis were pulled from the wreckage, including a woman who wept as she was carried over a man's shoulder to safety. Afterward, dozens of cheering teenagers started to smash the abandoned Humvees. One child climbed on a hood of one of the vehicles and beat it with a stick. A man held up a photo of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqis stripped the vehicles of equipment, one carrying a heavy machine gun, another waving a U.S. helmet. One man sported military headphones. ''This is for the madman Bush, for the madman Bremer!'' said one youth as he waved a rifle, referring to President Bush and the top American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. |