Billntwrk
05-03-04, 12:27 PM
Navy Seabee unit loses 5 more sailors in attack
By Carol Rosenberg
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
May 3, 2004
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq – Insurgents fired mortars inside a U.S. base in Ramadi yesterday, killing a soldier and five Navy Seabees from a Florida Reserve unit and wounding about 20 others.
In all, nine U.S. troops were killed across Iraq in guerrilla attacks yesterday, including two soldiers killed in northwest Baghdad and another in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. None was identified.
The mortar shelling of a Marine base in Ramadi caused the worst Navy casualties of the Iraqi invasion. Seven sailors have been killed in three days from the same unit, which arrived here just two weeks ago to work on Iraqi reconstruction projects.
The attacks came as the Marines are attempting to forge an alliance with Iraqi army generals to quell a ferocious anti-American insurrection in Fallujah, the flashpoint Sunni Muslim city of 250,000.
As they scattered, a second mortar made a nearly direct hit, killing some sailors on the spot and spewing shrapnel around the yard.
Navy corpsmen evacuated the casualties by helicopter in 10-minute intervals to medical field hospitals across western Iraq. The most serious casualties went to Baghdad and Balad.
"They really don't like us," said Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Michael Rambo, 27, a Seabee from Clearwater, Fla., who suffered shrapnel wounds in his chest and side, as he lay at Camp Fallujah's Bravo Surgical Company hospital awaiting X-rays last night.
Friday, he suffered a sprained thumb and other light injuries when insurgents fired missiles at a U.S. convoy of armored Humvees carrying engineering inspectors to school-building projects in a neighboring village. Two fellow sailors were killed and two more were wounded.
"We'll get through this," Rambo said of the devastation to his unit, Naval Mobile Combat Battalion 14, based in Jacksonville, Fla.
Friday's attack came as his convoy was moving between Al Asad base and Ramadi. Rambo came out shooting and captured one of the insurgents, who is now an enemy prisoner of war, a fellow sailor said.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed overnight Saturday when their convoy was attacked near Amarah in southern Iraq.
None of the dead and wounded was identified pending notification of next of kin.
Marine Maj. T.V. Johnson characterized yesterday's mortar attack as a "mass casualty" episode.
"It's been a bad couple of days for the Seabees," he said.
By Carol Rosenberg
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
May 3, 2004
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq – Insurgents fired mortars inside a U.S. base in Ramadi yesterday, killing a soldier and five Navy Seabees from a Florida Reserve unit and wounding about 20 others.
In all, nine U.S. troops were killed across Iraq in guerrilla attacks yesterday, including two soldiers killed in northwest Baghdad and another in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. None was identified.
The mortar shelling of a Marine base in Ramadi caused the worst Navy casualties of the Iraqi invasion. Seven sailors have been killed in three days from the same unit, which arrived here just two weeks ago to work on Iraqi reconstruction projects.
The attacks came as the Marines are attempting to forge an alliance with Iraqi army generals to quell a ferocious anti-American insurrection in Fallujah, the flashpoint Sunni Muslim city of 250,000.
As they scattered, a second mortar made a nearly direct hit, killing some sailors on the spot and spewing shrapnel around the yard.
Navy corpsmen evacuated the casualties by helicopter in 10-minute intervals to medical field hospitals across western Iraq. The most serious casualties went to Baghdad and Balad.
"They really don't like us," said Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Michael Rambo, 27, a Seabee from Clearwater, Fla., who suffered shrapnel wounds in his chest and side, as he lay at Camp Fallujah's Bravo Surgical Company hospital awaiting X-rays last night.
Friday, he suffered a sprained thumb and other light injuries when insurgents fired missiles at a U.S. convoy of armored Humvees carrying engineering inspectors to school-building projects in a neighboring village. Two fellow sailors were killed and two more were wounded.
"We'll get through this," Rambo said of the devastation to his unit, Naval Mobile Combat Battalion 14, based in Jacksonville, Fla.
Friday's attack came as his convoy was moving between Al Asad base and Ramadi. Rambo came out shooting and captured one of the insurgents, who is now an enemy prisoner of war, a fellow sailor said.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed overnight Saturday when their convoy was attacked near Amarah in southern Iraq.
None of the dead and wounded was identified pending notification of next of kin.
Marine Maj. T.V. Johnson characterized yesterday's mortar attack as a "mass casualty" episode.
"It's been a bad couple of days for the Seabees," he said.