Iraqi attacks kills 6 U.S. soldiers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi insurgents detonated a car bomb and then hammered a military headquarters in the city of Samarra with a mortar barrage Thursday, leveling the building and killing five U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi guardsman, the U.S. military said.

American troops – backed by attack helicopters – then fanned out through the city to hunt down the attackers in clashes that lasted into the late afternoon. Tanks deployed in the streets; smoke rose above a mosque.

The violence also killed three civilians, medical officials said. As many as 44 people were wounded, including 20 American soldiers and four Iraqi guardsmen, the military and hospital officials said.

Another U.S. soldier died from wounds sustained in an insurgent attack on his patrol in Baghdad, the U.S. military command said today.

Also Thursday, a U.S. Marine whose disappearance in Iraq sparked contradictory claims that he was kidnapped and beheaded turned up alive, and was at the U.S. Embassy in his native Lebanon. The Navy was investigating whether his abduction could have been a hoax.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 24, reported missing from his base near the troubled city of Fallujah 18 days ago, contacted U.S. officials who arranged to pick him up Thursday afternoon in Beirut, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

At nearly the same time, a gunfight broke out between members of Hassoun’s clan in his home city of Tripoli and business rivals who called them American collaborators because Hassoun joined the Marines. Two people were killed.

In the latest twists to Hassoun’s story, there was speculation he might have deserted his base and headed to Lebanon when he was abducted. The Navy was investigating whether the entire kidnapping might have been part of a hoax.

Meanwhile, the Philippines prohibited its citizens from traveling to Iraq to work after militants released a videotape threatening to kill a Filipino hostage if the country did not withdraw its troops.

In Thursday’s fighting, Iraqi insurgents lashed out about 10:30 a.m. at U.S. forces in Samarra, a hotbed of anti-coalition resistance 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Neal O’Brien, the spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division.

One witness, Khalid Salih, said the gate of the headquarters building shared by U.S. forces and their Iraqi national guard allies was open when a sport utility vehicle rigged with a bomb drove in.

“I saw a GMC enter the base and immediately explode,” he said.

Insurgents then launched 38 mortars at the headquarters, destroying the building, O’Brien said. Some of the rounds landed in nearby residential neighborhoods.

About 25 minutes after the mortar attack – once radar determined where it had originated – U.S. soldiers responded with four mortar rounds of their own.

American troops moved through the streets to flush out the insurgents, and four fighters shot at the soldiers before taking refuge in a building, O’Brien said. U.S. helicopters swooped in and attacked with Hellfire missiles, killing the four attackers.

Before the attack Thursday, a U.S. military convoy in Samarra was targeted by a roadside bomb that wounded one U.S. soldier, O’Brien said.

Late Thursday, four large explosions were heard at an Iraqi base in the town of Mishahda, 25 miles north of Baghdad. Volleys of gunfire broke out immediately afterward. U.S. military officials had no immediate comment.

Explosions were also heard in Fallujah, the Sunni city considered a haven for militants seeking to attack U.S. and Iraqi forces. Several airstrikes have been launched at suspected safehouses believed linked to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Early today, the Al-Jazeera television network broadcast a video showing Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group threatening to execute two Bulgarian hostages if the U.S. military did not release all Iraqi detainees within 24 hours.

Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the kidnappings, identifying the two men as truck drivers Ivaylo Kepov and Georgi Lazov.

The video showed the two hostages sitting with their hands cuffed, flanked by three masked, armed men. The group had previously claimed responsibility for the beheading of U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il.

The violence came in the wake of the government’s announcement Wednesday of new emergency laws giving it broad powers to fight the enduring insurgency.

The 51 Filipino troops in Iraq are a fraction of the nearly 160,000 foreign troops here, but more than 4,000 Filipino civilians serve food, clean toilets and form the backbone of the support staff for American forces. The U.S. military would be hard-pressed to operate in Iraq without the Filipinos.

Word of the capture of a Filipino hostage – and the insurgents’ threat to kill him – heaped pressure on Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who decided Thursday to bar more contract workers from traveling to Iraq.

The hostage was shown surrounded by armed, masked men on a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera on Wednesday. The hostage wore a bright orange jumpsuit like that worn by American hostage Nicholas Berg and South Korean hostage Kim Sun-il when they were beheaded by Iraqi militants led by al-Zarqawi.