19 americans among 22 killed in mosul

BAGHDAD: Nineteen US military personnel were among the 22 people killed on Tuesday when a blast ripped through a dining hall at a US base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a US army spokesman said.

"Twenty-two people were killed in action, 19 of them being US military personnel," Captain Brian Lucas told AFP, without specifying how many of them were soldiers. Another three military personnel, whose nationality was unknown, also died in the attack. Another 57 people were wounded, Lucas added.

The strike came at noon when many soldiers would have been eating lunch. Brig Gen Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia in northern Iraq, said there was "a single large explosion in a dining facility. We don’t yet know the source of that explosion." Ham added that there was "an investigation ongoing by explosives experts to determine the source." Officials at the Pentagon earlier said a number of mortars and rockets hit the site.

An embedded reporter from the Richmond-Times Dispatch described the scene of carnage at the base as soldiers sat down for lunch and were suddenly hammered in a rocket attack. "The force of the explosions knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and shrapnel sprayed into the men," journalist Jeremy Redmon reported.

"Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot. ‘Medic! Medic!. soldiers shouted."