IRAQ: Evidence suggests Mosul attack was by a suicide bomber inside the camp, writes Tom Clonan
Despite claims by the US State Department that Tuesday's devastating attack on US troops at Forward Operating Base Merez was caused by "rocket attack and mortar strike", there are a number of features to this attack that suggest otherwise.
Unlike a classic mortar attack, which typically consists of a salvo of several rounds - designed to "bracket" on to a target - Tuesday's attack, according to Task Force Olympia spokesman Lieut Col Paul Hastings, consisted of a "single blast".
The location and timing of this single blast, in a vulnerable soft-skinned mess tent, at noon - a peak dining time - suggests a high level of intelligence as to the movements of US troops within the base. The fact that the blast occurred as such a large number of US personnel were assembled in one place - without flak jackets and helmets - speaks of insider information.
Had insurgents indeed gained such detailed intelligence as to the internal day-to-day schedule of the Forward Operating Post - what the military term its "routine in defence" - they would still have had considerable difficulty targeting the mess hall with either rockets or mortars.
The short- to medium-range rockets that Iraqi insurgents typically use are flat-trajectory, "direct-fire" weapons that require line of sight to the target.
In other words, insurgents would have to have been either on or inside the camp's perimeter in order to engage it with rocket fire. Longer-range rockets of the type used by Islamic resistance groups within Iraq are notoriously inaccurate, and only a fluke shot could have ensured a one-round, one-hit strike on such a small target.
In addition, the distinctive heat signature and flash associated with such a rocket attack would have illuminated the thermal imaging (TI) sights within the camp's perimeter defences which, consistent with standard operating procedures, would have provoked an immediate firefight designed to neutralise such a threat.
There are no reports of the perimeter defences either opening or returning fire after Tuesday's blast.
Had insurgents targeted the mess hall with mortars, they would have faced greater difficulties. Mortars are weapons designed to afford "area suppression". They are relatively crude and indiscriminate in their "fall of shot" and once fired, tend to disperse over a wide area. They are almost impossible to deploy in single-shot, point-destruction mode. Although mortars could in theory be fired in salvos - with adjustments in bearing and elevation made after each detonation - to "adjust fire" on to the target, Tuesday's attack appears to have consisted of just one blast, not a sustained and deliberate attack.
The uncomfortable scenario facing Centcom is the likelihood that an insurgent group such as Ansar al Sunna - which has claimed responsibility for the attack - may indeed have infiltrated a suicide bomber into the heart of one of their fortified bases. This would appear confirmed by an ABC report quoting unofficial sources stating that the torso of a suicide bomber had been found on the base. This would be consistent with Ansar al Sunna's modus operandi in the past.
It is believed that this group was responsible for similar "in-place single-detonations" in terrorist outrages, such as the attack in August of last year on the Jordanian embassy and the UN's headquarters in Baghdad.
They are also believed to be responsible for the massive car-bomb attacks earlier this year which killed hundreds of Shia Iraqis in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala and Basra.
At the height of the Christian festival of Christmas - a time of increased sensitivity in terms of American public opinion as to the fate of US troops in Iraq - Iraq's insurgents may have scored an immense propaganda victory at the expense of Task Force Olympia. In terms of the morale of US troops - the majority of whose casualties have heretofore been sustained on patrols, convoy duties and conventional engagements - the psychological impact of Tuesday's attack will be profound. To paraphrase US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, these troops have gone to war with "the army they have", not the army they would wish for. Unfortunately for the troops, the under-strength army they have, of necessity, relies on a vast force of local labour - any one of whom could be a suicide bomber.
Dr Tom Clonan is a retired army officer. He lectures in the School of Media at the Dublin Institute of Technology.