US probes deadly Iraq attack, as freed French hostages return home

MOSUL, Iraq, Dec 22 (AFP) - A top US general said the blast that killed 22 people in a US military mess hall in Iraq appeared to be a suicide bombing, as two French journalists received a hero's welcome in Paris after being held captive by Islamic extremists for four months.
In the latest bloodshed, a fuel tanker, which locals said was booby-trapped, blew up late Wednesday in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 20.
US marines said there was no evidence of any booby-trap device.
A power explosion at a packed army mess hall in Mosul on Tuesday, claimed by Al-Qaeda linked militants, was probably the work of a suicide bomber, said the chairman of US Joint Chief of Staffs, General Richard Myers.
"At this point, it looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker," Myers told reporters at the Pentagon, suggesting that an insurgent had infiltrated the US base before detonating the bomb.
An FBI team of explosive experts had been dispatched to the city to determine the cause of the attack.
The US military swept Mosul Wednesday for insurgents following the blast, shutting down bridges across the Tigris River, which runs down the middle of the city.
The brazen strike came on the heels of a new poll showing US skepticism about the war in Iraq at a new high and added to concerns over whether landmark elections scheduled for January 30 could go ahead.
Among the dead were 14 American military personnel, four US civilians and four members of the Iraqi security forces, the military said.
The four civilians worked for US conglomerate Halliburton, which has lost 62 employees around Iraq and in neighboring Kuwait since the invasion last year.
Dozens of US soldiers wounded in the attack arrived in Germany and were being transferred to a military hospital, "42 injured soldiers, eight of them in critical condition," said a military hospital spokeswoman.
Responsibility was claimed by Al-Qaeda linked Ansar al-Sunna, which said it was a suicide bombing against "American crusaders".
Mosul, the third-largest city in Iraq, was once considered a success story of the US presence in the country, but has been transformed into a battleground between insurgents and US forces.
In a rare positive development, French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot returned home to Paris to a hero's welcome after four months in captivity at the hands of the Islamic Army in Iraq.
The reporters told media of their ordeal, saying that though they sometimes thought they were about to die and were transported around Iraq in cardboard coffins in the back of four-wheel-drive vehicles, they never lost hope.
The pair had been seized on August 20 in an area south of Baghdad known as the "triangle of death" for its high rate of ambushes and kidnappings.
The Islamic Army said the reporters had been released because they were not spies and due to France's political stance on Iraq and Palestine, according to a statement read on Al-Jazeera television.
More than 150 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since last April when the insurgency began to show its full strength. At least 30 hostages have been murdered.
Late Wednesday, a fuel tanker exploded in the trouble spot of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 20, said a local hospital official.
Locals called it a bombing, but a marine spokesman said a team of military explosives experts found no evidence of any bomb material.
Meanwhile, about 2,000 residents of Fallujah, one of Iraq's most devastated cities since a US offensive there last month to root out insurgents, were expected to return home on Thursday, in a first wave of those displaced by the fighting.
As the US and Iraqi governments were banking on a strong Iraqi police force to play a role in Fallujah, the head of the Al-Anbar police department resigned, a police officer said.
Brigadier General Fawwaz Armut al-Dulaimi quit over the interior ministry's decision to slash Anbar's police force by 50 percent, said fellow Brigadier General Abdel Salam al-Dulaimi.
The police in Anbar, home to Fallujah, have been dogged by corruption.
And an oil pipeline feeding the refinery at Baiji in northern Iraq was repaired after being sabotaged earlier this week, an oil ministry official said.
But two more pipelines were blown up on Monday and Tuesday, an oil ministry spokesman said. The routes were linked to Baghdad. The spokesman said the attacks were meant to steal oil for the black market.
An Iraqi police crackdown in the Shiite holy city of Najaf after a deadly weekend bombing sparked a gunfight that left one policeman and one insurgent dead overnight, an officer said.
Four suspected Islamist extremists were also arrested in the raids, which followed a car bombing on Sunday that killed 52 people and wounded more than 140 after a similar blast in the pilgrimage city of Karbala that killed 14.
In the wake of the bombings, Iran banned its nationals from travelling to Iraq.
A Kurdish policeman was shot dead outside Kirkuk, and a former general under Saddam Hussein and a sniper, wanted for killing Americans, were arrested inside the city, police sources said.
In another dose of bad news, Contrack International Incorporated became the first major US contractor to pull out of the reconstruction effort in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times said, adding that high security costs were to blame.

12/22/2004 21:06 GMT - AFP