Rockets struck a mess tent at a military base in Mosul where hundreds of US soldiers had just sat down to lunch Tuesday, and a Pentagon official said at least 22 people were killed and 50 were wounded.  

A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility.

The attack came the same day that British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Baghdad and described the ongoing violence in Iraq as a "battle between democracy and terror."

Jeremy Redmon, a reporter for the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch embedded with the troops in Mosul, said 13 soldiers were killed in the attack at Forward Operating Base Marez, including two from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion. More than 50 people were wounded, and civilians may have been among them, he said.

The base, also known as the al-Ghizlani military camp, is used by both US troops and the interim Iraqi government's security forces The identities of the casualties were not known, the Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The US Army's Task Force Olympia is based in this predominantly Sunni Muslim city, about 220 miles north of Baghdad.

Amid the screaming and thick smoke in the tent, soldiers turned their tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot, Redmon said.

Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters, while others wandered around in a daze and collapsed, he said.

"I can't hear! I can't hear!" One female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.

The shelling blew a huge hole in the roof of the tent, and puddles of blood, lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor, Redmon reported.

Near the front entrance, troops tended a soldier with a serious head wound, but within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag, he said. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a "martyrdom operation" targeting a mess hall in the al-Ghizlani camp.

Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group that wants to turn Iraq into an Islamic state like Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. The Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for beheading 12 Nepalese hostages and other recent attacks in Mosul.

Mosul was the scene of the deadliest single incident for US troops in Iraq. On Nov. 15, 2003, two Black Hawk helicopters collided over the city, killing 17 soldiers and injuring five. The crash occurred as the two choppers maneuvered to avoid ground fire from insurgents.

Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year. But insurgent attacks in the largely Sunni Arab area have increased dramatically in the past year and particularly since the US-led military operation in November to retake the restive city of Fallujah from militants.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of students demonstrated in the center of the city, demanding that US troops cease breaking into homes and mosques there.

Also Tuesday, Iraqi security forces repelled another attack by insurgents trying to seize a police station in the center of the city, the US military said.

On Sunday, insurgents detonated two roadside bombs and a car bomb targeting US forces in Mosul in three separate attacks. Other car bombs Sunday killed 67 people in the Shiite holy cites of Najaf and Karbala.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned Monday that insurgents are trying to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail the January 30 elections.

During his visit, Blair held talks with Allawi and Iraqi election officials, whom he called heroes for carrying out their work despite attacks. Three members of Iraq's election commission were dragged from the car and killed this week in Baghdad.

"I said to them that I thought they were the heroes of the new Iraq that's being created, because here are people who are risking their lives every day to make sure that the people of Iraq get a chance to decide their own destiny," Blair said at a joint news conference with Allawi.

Blair, who has paid a political price for going to war in Iraq, defended the role of Britain's 8,000 troops by referring to terrorism.

"If we defeat it here, we deal it a blow worldwide," he said. "If Iraq is a stable and democratic country, that is good for the Middle East, and what is good for the Middle East, is actually good for the world, including Britain.

Blair, whose trip to Iraq hadn't been disclosed for security reasons, urged Iraqis to back next month's elections.

"Whatever people's feelings and beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror," he said.

Allawi said his government was committed to holding the elections as scheduled, despite calls for their postponement owing to the violence.

"We have always expected that the violence would increase as we approach the elections," Allawi said. "We now are on the verge, for the first time in history, of having democracy in action in this country."

Blair flew into the Iraqi capital about 11 AM aboard a British military transport aircraft from Jordan. A Royal Air Force Puma helicopter flew from Baghdad airport to the city center, escorted by US Black Hawk helicopters.

It was Blair's first visit to Baghdad and his third to Iraq since the dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. Blair visited British troops stationed around the southern Iraqi city of Basra in mid-2003 and in January. President George W. Bush had paid a surprise visit to US troops in Baghdad at Thanksgiving in 2003.

Blair flew to Basra later Tuesday.

The British leader was a key supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam. His decision to back the US offensive angered many lawmakers in his governing Labor Party and a large portion of the British public.

In other violence Tuesday, a US jet bombed a suspected insurgent target west of Baghdad. Hamdi al-Alosi, a doctor in a hospital in the city of Hit, said four people were killed and seven injured in the strike. He said the attack damaged several cars and two buildings. A US military spokesman could not confirm the casualties.

Elsewhere, five American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were wounded when the Humvee they were traveling in was hit by a car bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the US military said.

In Baqouba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, unidentified assailants shot and killed an Iraqi nuclear scientist as he was on his way to work, witnesses said. Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher, a professor at Diyala University, was killed as he drove over a bridge on the Khrisan River. His car swerved and plummeted into the water.

In northern Iraq, insurgents set ablaze a major pipeline used to ship oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, a principal export route for Iraqi oil, an official with the North Oil Co. said. Firefighters were on the scene, 70 miles southwest of Kirkuk.

Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.

(Chinadaily.com.cn via agencies, December 22, 2004)