Armed resistance activists attacked the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, injuring 44 U.S. forces and 12 prisoners, the U.S. military said Sunday.
At least 40 activists fired rocket-propelled grenades and set off two car bombs at the infamous prison as darkness fell Saturday night, 1st Lt. Adam Rondeau said. Soldiers and Marines stationed at the detention facility responded, and the resulting clash and gunfight lasted about 40 minutes. No one escaped.
"This was obviously a very well-organized attack and a very big attack," Rondeau said.
On Sunday, U.S. military officials raised the casualty toll from 20 to 44 U.S. service members, and said some of the injuries were serious.
Elsewhere, a U.S. Marine was killed in central Iraq, the military said Sunday.
The Marine, assigned to the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed Saturday by an explosion while conducting combat operations in the city of Hadithah, the military said in a statement from Camp Fallujah.
Meanwhile, Iraqi lawmakers elected a Sunni Arab as parliament speaker and Shiite and Kurdish leaders as his deputies on Sunday, ending days of deadlock as they sought to balance Iraq's predominant religious and ethnic groups in a new government.
The decision was a step toward repairing the tattered image of the newly elected National Assembly, which had bickered for days over the post.
Industry Minister Hajim al-Hassani was elected parliament speaker; elected as his deputies were Hussain al-Shahristani — a Shiite and former nuclear scientist - and the Kurdish leader Aref Taifour.
A mortar round struck near Iraq's foreign ministry, shooting a cloud of smoke into the sky, shortly after parliament elected the new speaker. The round hit just outside the Green Zone, the sealed off enclave that is home to parliament and the US embassy, just before 1 pm (0900 GMT), an interior ministry official said.
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
