IRAQ: US forces sealed off entire districts of the Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, blocking bridges and raiding homes in a hunt for suspects after an attack that killed 18 Americans and four other people.
Mosul's governor issued an overnight order on television banning the use of the five bridges over the River Tigris and said anyone breaking the order would be shot. Residents said Iraq's third city was a virtual ghost town, with no one in the streets.
FBI and other experts flown in from Baghdad were "in the middle of" determining what caused Tuesday's explosion at the Marez base in Mosul, Lieut Gen Thomas Metz said. "If it was a bomb, I think they'll be able to figure out the size and the kinds of materials that were put into it," he told CNN.
The military declined to comment on an ABC television report that investigators found evidence that a suicide bomber carried out the deadliest attack on Americans since they invaded Iraq.
"Investigators at the base have found remnants of a torso and a suicide vest that was probably a backpack," ABC said, lending weight to a claim by Iraq's Ansar al-Sunna guerrillas.
A US spokesman in Mosul, Lieut Col Paul Hastings, said: "It is still under investigation." The US military revised its description of the 22 people killed, saying 13 were American soldiers, not 14 as previously reported.
It said the others were five US civilians, three Iraqi National Guards and a non-American - as yet unidentified.
US officials initially said rocket and mortar rounds were fired, but Ansar al-Sunna credited one of its "martyrs" and the US commander in Mosul said there was only one explosion.
The attack has raised fears of a new guerrilla offensive before next month's election, six weeks after US troops stormed the rebel stronghold of Falluja in a bid to crush the insurgency.
Hitherto quiet Mosul has been near anarchy since. "We conducted our operations last night as we planned," Lieut Gen Metz said. "We're pushing on toward the elections."
Witnesses said US forces, backed by Iraqi National Guards, sealed off neighbourhoods in western and south-eastern Mosul and raided homes. "They're looking in the areas that are known hotspots," one resident in the west of the city said.
Forty-four of the revised toll of 69 wounded were US soldiers. Some were taken to a military hospital in Germany, eight in critical condition, hospital staff said. The previous costliest incident for Americans was last year when two helicopters came down in Mosul, killing 17 soldiers.
President George W. Bush, who said on Monday the bombers were taking a toll, sent his condolences to the families. He called Iraq "a vital mission for peace" as a new poll showed most Americans believe the war was not worth it.
Tuesday's attack took place when US soldiers at Forward Operating Base Marez, a huge camp built round the city's airfield, were sitting down to lunch in a vast tented hall made of canvas and metal - a type used throughout Iraq.
"A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and pellet-sized shrapnel sprayed into the men," wrote witness Jeremy Redmon, a journalist for the US Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper.
In the past two months alone nearly 200 people have been found dead, most of them Iraqis, in a city of two million.
US contractor Contrack International has pulled out of a $325 million Iraqi transportation project because of violence, a US official said yesterday. The company is the first US contactor to leave Iraq totally. Instability and the anti-American insurgency have delayed an $18.6 billion US-funded rebuilding programme and forced more money to be diverted to security. "I confirm that Contrack has left," said Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Schnaible, a spokesman for the US programme.
Contrack led a consortium to build roads, bridges, airport facilities and railways in Iraq. Orascom, an Egyptian group dominated by the Sawiris family, is a part owner of Contrack.
Iraq's US-led occupation authority awarded Orascom a contact to build a mobile phone network in central Iraq last year.