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WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2003 – A car bomb exploded outside an engineering office and down the street from a police station in Fallujah, Iraq, wounding two Iraqis, Combined Joint Task Force 7 officials said today.
Coalition soldiers arrived at the scene moments later and secured the area and gave assistance to the two wounded. They turned the area over to Iraqi police. Press reports said the police station or the mayor's office may have been the intended target, but security was too tight. Fallujah is located in what officials call the Baathist Triangle, and has been the scene of many attacks on coalition forces. The Baath Party was Saddam Hussein's political affiliation. In the north, a soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was wounded when his patrol came under attack from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, Oct. 27. The patrol was going through the village of Tall Afar when it came under attack. The soldier was evacuated to the 21st Combat Support Hospital in Mosul. The attacks follow what officials called a "rough day" for coalition forces in Iraq. A series of four car bombings in Baghdad killed at least 34 people and wounded more than 200 injured. One attack was directed at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent offices in Baghdad. "The vast majority of the victims are innocent Iraqi civilians," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a statement Oct. 27. "American officials in Iraq will work closely with Iraqi security officials, the governing council and the international relief organizations targeted to determine who committed this terrible attack and bring them to justice as quickly as possible." Powell called the bombings an attack on the Iraqi people. He said these types of attacks will not deter the coalition from realizing its vision of a democratic and prosperous Iraq. An 82nd Airborne Division soldier died as a result of a nonhostile gunshot wound. The soldier was serving at a forward operating base near Fallujah.
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