Insurgents making more powerful roadside bombs: US general

WASHINGTON: Insurgents have been packing larger amounts of explosives into roadside bombs such as the one that killed seven US soldiers in a Bradley armored fighting vehicle, a senior military official said here on Friday. “We’ve noticed in the recent couple of weeks that the IEDs are being built more powerfully, with a more explosive effort in a smaller number of IEDS,” said Brigadier General David Rodriguez, of the Joint Staff. IED is the military acronym for improvised explosive device. The Bradley is second only to the M1 Abrams main battle tanks in terms of its armored protection, and yet a roadside bomb that went off Thursday in northwest Baghdad was powerful enough to kill all seven US soldiers inside. It was the largest number of US troops killed in a single attack since last month’s suicide bombing in a mess hall at a military base at Mosul that killed 22 people, including 14 US soldiers. Rodriguez said armor alone was not the answer to the bombings, noting that even a Abrams tanks had been lost to a roadside explosions. “The way we’re going to overcome that is a multi-pronged effort on tactics, techniques, procedures, intelligence, and a wide range of things to prevent that from hurting soldiers,” he said. afp

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