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11 troops die in Iraq; contractor escapes
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-05-03 09:54 In a daring escape, American hostage Thomas Hamill
pried open the doors of the house where he was being held late Sunday morning
and ran a half-mile to a military convoy that was passing by, officials and his
wife said. Insurgents attacked U.S. forces across Iraq, killing 11 Americans.
Thomas Hamill, an
American civilian captured April 9, 2004, during an ambush of a convoy
west of Baghdad, is shown in this undated image from a videotape given to
the Al-Jazeera television network. Hamill was found by U.S. forces Sunday,
May 2, 2004, south of Tikrit, Iraq, after he apparently escaped from his
captors, the U.S. military said. [AP] | Hamill, 43, of Macon, Miss., identified himself to the U.S. soldiers, then
led them back to his Iraqi captors, two of whom were captured.
Hamill, a truck driver for a Halliburton Corp. subsidiary, escaped more than
three weeks after being abducted April 9 by gunmen who blasted the convoy he was
driving on the outskirts of Baghdad. An American soldier abducted in the same
attack remains missing, and at least four of Hamill's co-workers were killed.
Hamill had not been heard from since the day after the attack, when his
kidnappers released a video of him standing in front of an Iraqi flag and
threatened to kill him within 12 hours unless the United States ended its siege
of Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad.
Hamill's escape came two days after Marines started pulling back from
Fallujah under a new agreement ending their assault on the insurgent stronghold.
Hamill's wife, Kellie, was called at about 5:50 a.m. CDT with news of his
escape and later spoke to her husband.
"He sounded wonderful, so wonderful. He said he was fine," she told The
Associated Press from their Mississippi home. "He said he was more worried about
his mom, his grandmother, me and our kids."
Meanwhile, 11 soldiers were killed in separate attacks, the military said,
raising the U.S. death toll to 151 since a wave of violence began April 1. At
least 753 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Six U.S. service members were killed and another 30 were wounded in a mortar
attack near the western city of Ramadi.
The city is about 60 miles west of Baghdad in Anbar province, which includes
Fallujah. A military spokeswoman gave no further details and did not say whether
the victims were Marines or Army soldiers, but most Americans stationed there
are Marines.
Another U.S. soldier was killed and 10 were wounded in a bomb and small arms
attack on a coalition base near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
Overnight, Shiite militiamen attacked a U.S. convoy with small arms fire and
rocket-propelled grenades near the southern city of Amarah, 180 miles south of
Baghdad. Two soldiers were killed, the military said. Through the night and into
Sunday morning, Iraqis set fire to the long line of abandoned vehicles, jumping
on the hoods and beating them with sticks.
An attack in northwest Baghdad killed two other soldiers and wounded two
Iraqi security officers and another American, the military said.
U.S. troops also exchanged gunfire Sunday near Najaf with militiamen loyal to
radical Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr, who is charged in the murder of a rival
cleric last year.
In the southern city of Basra, a mortar shell exploded late Sunday near the
headquarters of the traffic police, killing one civilian, police Lt. Col. Ali
Kadhim said. Minutes later, gunmen killed a policeman at a checkpoint, he said.
It was unclear if the attacks were coordinated.
Hamill was discovered at about 11:15 a.m. local time when he approached a
patrol from the 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry, part of the New York National
Guard, in the town of Balad, about 50 miles north of where he was abducted, the
western Baghdad area of Abu Ghraib.
Kellie Hamill said her husband said he was locked in a building and heard the
troops driving by. He "pried the door open. He said he ran half-a-mile down the
road and caught up with the convoy.
"Isn't that something?" she said.
Soldiers then went back to the house and arrested two Iraqis and confiscated
an AK-47 rifle, the military said.
Thomas Hamill, a truck driver working for KBR — a Halliburton subsidiary
formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root — had an infected gunshot wound in
his left arm and was flown by helicopter to Baghdad, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a
spokesman for U.S. troops in nearby Tikrit. The video images of Hamill soon
after his abduction showed his left arm in a sling, suggesting he was wounded
during the attack on his convoy.
"He has spoken to his family. He is now ready to get back to work," U.S.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad.
In a statement on its Web site, Halliburton said, "Tommy is a courageous hero
and we are proud of his resolve, resilience and refusal to give up hope."
Hamill's abduction came at the height of the wave of kidnappings of
foreigners sparked by the intense violence that began a month ago. Up to 40
people from several nations were abducted, though most were later freed. One
hostage, an Italian, was executed by his captors.
An American soldier, Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, remains in the hands of
kidnappers, as do three other Italian security guards.
Maupin, who grew up near Batavia, Ohio, and Hamill were in the same convoy
that came under attack in Abu Ghraib amid an insurgent campaign against supply
routes around the capital.
Besides Hamill and Maupin, six other KBR employees and another U.S. soldier
initially were reported missing.
The bodies of four KBR employees were later found in a shallow grave near the
site of the attack. The body of Sgt. Elmer Krause, of Greensboro, N.C., also was
found.
Halliburton said in its statement that it still had no information on the two
KBR employees still missing.
Hamill, a dairy farmer who signed on with KBR in Iraq to pay off debts, was
filmed as he was being abducted. The insurgents allowed an Australian camera
crew to film him in the back seat of the gunmen's car. Hamill identified himself
before the car sped off.
The next day, the Arab television station Al-Jazeera showed the video of
Hamill standing in front of an Iraqi flag.
"Our only demand is to remove the siege from the city of mosques," one
kidnapper said in the tape. "If you don't respond within 12 hours ... he will be
treated worse than those who were killed and burned in Fallujah."
That statement was a reference to four American security contractors who were
killed and mutilated in Fallujah on March 30.
Marines were replaced on the south side by a newly created Iraqi brigade that
the Americans said would root out die-hard guerrillas.
The new brigade is led by a former Saddam Hussein-era general and consists
largely of former soldiers — including some who probably took up arms against
the Marines during last month's siege.
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