Blasts Kill Up to 18

Sun Oct 10, 2004 09:38 AM ET
By Alistair Lyon

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two blasts killed up to 18 people, including an American soldier, in Baghdad on Sunday hours before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived to gauge efforts to calm violence ahead of January elections.

The United States and its allies in Iraq are engaged in a battle of wills with insurgents, Rumsfeld told U.S. marines during an earlier stop at a desert airbase northwest of Baghdad.

"They are hoping to cause members of the coalition to decide that the pain and the ugliness and the difficulty of the task is simply too great," Rumsfeld said.

"They know they cannot defeat us militarily. But they are hoping they can win the test of wills. It's a battle of morale. It's a battle of perception," declared Rumsfeld, whose visit comes about three weeks before the U.S. presidential election.

Rumsfeld, who held separate meetings with U.S. commanders, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte and Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Baghdad, arrived a few hours after two blasts brought more bloodshed to the capital.

The first explosion was near the Oil Ministry and a nearby police academy soon after 7 a.m. (0400 GMT). Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said 17 people had been killed by a suicide car bomb that may have gone off before it reached the police academy, where recruits were lining up.

"Most of the dead were passersby, including seven women," Jihad said.

An Interior Ministry official said investigators were still trying to decide if the blast was caused by a bomb or a rocket. He put the death toll at six. Police put it at nine.

In eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said a suicide bomber attacked a U.S. convoy, wounding an American soldier who later died. Two civilians were also wounded.

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