Daily News (New York) December 23, 2004
Five From City Hurt In Mess-Tent Massacre
Wife of wounded Staten Island soldier: "We're very religious and we believe that god has given the 204th a hedge of protection'
By Richard Sisk and Corky Siemaszko
FIVE NEW YORKERS serving in Iraq were believed to be among the dozens of U.S. soldiers wounded in a deadly attack that turned a mess tent in Mosul into hell on Earth, the Daily News has learned.
The revelation came as the Pentagon admitted that a suicide bomber got past security at the Forward Operating Base Marez and detonated the blast that killed 14 G.I.s, four U.S. civilian contractors, three Iraqi security guards and one "unidentified non-U.S. person."
"At this point, it looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker," said Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, a day after officials said the tent was likely hit by a rocket. "We had a suicide bomber apparently strap something to his body."
Sgt. Kenny Ghany, 45, of Staten Island, was one of the 400 to 500 soldiers lining up for chow when the blast went off.
He survived, but his wife, Lori, feared the worst until she heard her husband's voice.
"I was not expecting to see that on TV," the 40-year-old mother of two told The News. "They kept showing the pictures over and over. I kept saying, 'Oh no, oh my God. Oh no, oh my God.' "
Unable to reach Kenny or raise anybody at the Harlem headquarters of the 204th Engineering Battalion, an increasingly frantic Lori called her church, the International Christian Center on Staten Island.
"We're very religious and we believe that God has given the 204th a hedge of protection," she said. "I called my pastor and he prayed with me over the phone." Several minutes and a lifetime later, Lori's prayers were answered.
"I was so relieved," she said. "I asked him if he had all his parts and he said he did and that he was fine."
An E-mail sent to the Daily News by a soldier on the base reported that Kenny Ghany, who works for the city Department of Transportation, suffered a shrapnel wound to a leg, and four other New Yorkers from his unit suffered minor injuries. A sixth member, from Bayonne, N.J., also was injured. The military did not confirm that last night, and the other soldiers could not be located.
"If he did get hurt, he's holding out on me," Lori Ghany said.
Military officials investigating the lunchtime attack Tuesday are focusing on the "one non-U.S. person" who was among the 22 killed, and a person of "unknown nationality and occupation" who was among the 69 wounded. It was one of the worst attacks on U.S. forces since the war in Iraq began 21 months ago.
A radical Sunni Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, boasted on a Web site that the "martyrdom operation" was carried out by a 24-year-old Mosul man who had worked at the base and gave intelligence on U.S. troop movements and positions to the group.
The suicide bomber, who was married last month, used plastic explosives hidden in his clothes, the message said. Army officers initially speculated that the blast came from a long-range heavy mortar or 122-mm. rocket, but explosives experts determined that the blast came from within the huge white canvas tent that served as a mess hall.
They also found fragments of the suicide vest or backpack used by the bomber and the ball bearings packed with the explosive to make it more deadly.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the U.S. is winning the war despite the surge in casualties that raised the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to more than 1,320 and wounded to more than 10,000.
Rumsfeld said better cooperation between U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces is the key to success, but "we've said all along we expected the level of violence to increase" as the Jan. 30 elections approached.
But military analysts said the Mosul attack could drive a wedge between the Iraqi forces and U.S. troops. "Now every time an American soldier looks at an Iraqi soldier, he's going to be afraid that the guy will blow up," said John Pike, head of the globalsecurity.org think tank.
Copyright © 2004 Daily News, L.P.
