Iraqis furious over constant bloodshed

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A car bomb exploded in a jammed commercial district Thursday, turning the sky gray as shops and restaurants caught fire in the most deadly of a string of attacks that killed 21, including a general and colonel who were assassinated.

Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing stones at police and U.S. forces who came to the scene of the bombing. More than 90 were also wounded in Thursday's violence.

The attacks came as U.S. troops were in the midst of a major offensive near the Syrian border, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad. Fierce clashes were reported with insurgents on the outskirts of the town of Qaim, where angry residents lashed out at U.S. forces.

"They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left," one man in Qaim told Associated Press Television News. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.

Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage, and APTN footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the town. The U.S. has pounded the area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire in the first days of the offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Five more American troops died in Iraq, two during the offensive Wednesday and three others when their convoys hit roadside bombs Thursday in Baghdad and surrounding areas, the U.S. military announced. At least 1,611 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

More than 420 people have died in the two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.

At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.

"This requires patience," he said at a news conference. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary . . . I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."

"What we're seeing is really an attempt to discredit this new cabinet and new government," Myers said. "This is, in most cases, Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't know how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."