60 Americans injured in attack; trial for Baathists in days on TV

The American forces in Iraq yesterday received three blows, with one hour difference among netween them, leading to 60 soldiers being wounded in an operation targeting a base for the US forces in Tel Affar town, near Musil, and in another operation at the occupation base in northern Baghdad, while one American reconnaissance was downed by missile.

As the American forces announced a decrease in the number of attacks against it, the series of operations yesterday came to stress the failure of the inspection and breaking in campaign in deterring the resistance.

The attacker of Tel Affar base, 50 Km from Musil, succeeded in arriving in his car to the entrance of the base, despite the fact that the car was hit by bullets of soldiers who were stationed at the gate and at a monitoring tower, where he detonated a car with 455 kg of explosives.

Some 61 American soldiers and 8 Iraqi civilians were wounded in the explosion. The explosion took place yesterday early at dawn when the American soldiers were still sleeping in the barracks.

Hours after this operation, one attacker detonated himself before a military base to the north of Baghdad, where two soldiers were wounded while three American were killed, when a dam collapsed on a vehicle they were riding to the north of Baghdad. The occupation stressed that the incident did not result in an attack.

In al-Huseineih base to the north east of Baghdad, the attacker detonated himself in front of a building, after the American guards suspected his behavior, and opened fire at him while he was running towards the base.

Meantime, the governing council in Baghdad approved yesterday a law to found a special court to try members of the former regime, chaired by Saddam Hussein, in an extraordinary step, as the US administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, gave the governing council the authority to decide on a law for one time ,with the aim to compose the court whose members will be announced today.

The member in the governing council, Unadim Kana, said that the trial will be held openly and will be shown on TV. He stressed that the first persons to be convicted are officials in the former regime, especially the 55 persons whose name were stated on the list of wanted by the American forces. Actually 40 of them were arrested including the vice president, the foreign minister among others.