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Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007

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BAGHDAD -- A suicide truck bomber struck a strategic bridge outside Baghdad on Tuesday, sending cars plunging into the river and killing at least 10 people in the second attack on the span in three months, police said.

The attack came as 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops began a new operation north of the Iraqi capital targeting insurgents who have fled a crackdown in the restive city of Baqouba, the military said Tuesday.

The Thiraa Dijla bridge in Taji, a town near a U.S. air base some 12 miles north of the capital, came under attack around noon, police said, giving the casualty toll.

The bridge, which stretched across a canal on the main highway that links Baghdad with the northern city of Mosul, was bombed three months ago and only one lane had reopened, according to the police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

The attacker detonated his payload after going through an Iraqi army checkpoint about 40 yards away from the span, which was devastated, according to the officials.

A number of cars plunged into the canal, which links the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, and rescue efforts were under way, the officials said.

U.S. and Iraqi troops cordoned off the area to evacuate the wounded, the military said.

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The U.S. and Iraq operation farther north of the capital, dubbed Operation Lightning Hammer, began late Monday with an air assault and was part of a broader U.S. push announced Monday to build on successes in Baghdad and surrounding areas by targeting al-Qaida in Iraq and Iranian-allied Shiite militia fighters nationwide.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said the troops were pursuing al-Qaida cells that had been disrupted and forced into hiding by previous operations.

"Our main goal with Lightning Hammer is to eliminate the terrorist organizations ... and show them that they truly have no safe haven - especially in Diyala," he said in a statement.

The military did not immediately provide results from the operation because it was in the beginning stages.

Spokesman Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly said the effort would not interrupt operations in Baqouba, where U.S. forces have flushed out al-Qaida and Shiite militiamen who had fomented a virtual civil war there.

"We are not drawing down in Baqouba at all, in fact, we are in the build and hold portion of the operation there," he said.

The military has claimed success in quelling the violence in the city, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, as well as in the capital, but it also acknowledges that Shiite and Sunni extremists fled to outlying areas where attacks have been increasing.

On Monday, three U.S. soldiers were killed in an explosion near their vehicle in the northwestern province of Ninevah, while another American soldier died during fighting in Baghdad, the military said in separate statements.

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