DISPATCHES FROM IRAQ
Closing the bomb 'supermarkets'

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

KIRKUK, Iraq — To find bomb-making materials — the kind that take the lives of Americans and Iraqis every week — you don't have to go far.

Pvt. Brian Smith of Detroit, a member of the 65th Engineer Battalion, is part of a bucket brigade loading shells into a pit to be detonated outside Kirkuk.

Soldiers and airmen from the 65th Engineer Battalion and the 506th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron stack 100mm shells from one of many abandoned caches in northern Iraq for demolition.

Soldiers from the 65th Engineer Battalion load Iraqi munitions to detonate. In the foreground are anti-tank rounds.

The hazardous ammunition rains shrapnel as it goes up in smoke. Blowing up arms left over from Saddam's regime is one way to ensure they won't be used gainst coalition forces.

Demolitions experts connect detonation cord to bricks of C4 explosives laid over 100 mm shells. Given what's been found, Air Force Staff Sgt. Ray Pomeroy said, more will be unearthed for many years. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Dug up out of big pits that look as if a dog had searched for a bone, they're haphazardly strewn about i a couple hundred 100 mm and 130 mm shells over here; a like number spilling down a low hill there; dozens of bulldozer-dug pits that likely contain more rounds visible along a mile stretch of dirt road.

Residents unearth the 1 1/2-foot green or blue warheads to pry copper bands off for scrap. High explosives are cast aside or sometimes pried out for use in cooking fires.

Others pick them up for another purpose: To use against U.S. soldiers in roadside bombs.

"We call them IED (improvised explosive device) supermarkets — they come out and pick up the stuff they need," said Air Force Master Sgt. Jerry Shelton, who's part of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team.

The Air Force and the Army's 65th Engineer Battalion out of Schofield Barracks are trying to close down the store.

Several days a week, combat engineers head out with Air Force EOD counterparts to destroy leftover munitions, piling up the shells, wiring them with lots of C4 plastic explosives, and detonating the stocks with thunderous booms that send mushroom clouds hundreds of feet in the air.

The combat engineers, or "sappers," specialize in breaching obstacles and destroying mines.

"We do that normally, but not on this scale," said Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Marsh, 31, a Bravo Company team leader. "So we're adapting to this country. As small as (Air Force) EOD is, we work really well with them."

Three soldiers with the 4th Infantry Division were killed several weeks ago outside Kirkuk when their Humvee drove over four 105 mm artillery shells buried in the pavement. A 600-foot electrical cord was used to detonate the bomb, which blew the Humvee several feet in the air. Two bombs went off over the weekend, but did not injure Schofield soldiers.

Engineers from the 65th head out three to five days a week with the Air Force to blow up bombs.

Last week, on a single day, 468 pieces of ordnance — 120 mm, 82 mm and 60 mm mortars and 130 mm projectiles — were destroyed.

"There's so much out here — that wasn't a big day," Shelton said. "It's the big stuff, especially the 130s, that we're most concerned about."

Najat Ghafur Raheem, an Iraqi police officer who used to be an Army air defense officer and was in charge of logistics for the area, had pointed out the site to U.S. forces. He said there is much, much more.

Raheem, 39, a smiling man who now works out of the Arafa police station, said through an interpreter that "on one night for one unit for one company, they received 30 trucks — 35 tons (of munitions) each."

Each city had four defensive zones, and the caches the Schofield engineers and Air Force are destroying are in the last of those zones.

Raheem said he came forward with the information "first of all, as a citizen of Iraq. Second, I am a police officer and this is my duty. And I would like to cooperate with coalition forces for the safety of the air base and city of Kirkuk."

One day, four Humvees and about a dozen personnel head out from Kirkuk Air Base and barrel down the highway at 50 miles per hour — speed makes it harder for roadside bombers to hit convoys.

At one spot along the dirt side road, Shelton points out a 6-by-5-foot brick-lined pit with a stairway where 115 Yugoslavian 120 mm mortars were buried under a foot of dirt.

"All of the rounds were still in their factory shipping container, fiberboard box; just pristine," Shelton said.

With munitions everywhere, the demolition teams have a daunting task.

But Shelton, 39, out of Kadena Air Base in Japan and in Iraq since late December, said a difference is being made.

At Al Fatah Airfield, about 30 miles to the southwest in Al Huwijah, 1.6 million pounds of explosives, including 500- and 1,000-pound bombs — the biggest munitions cache in Iraq — were destroyed.

"We've been clearing that up for the past six months, and now it's gone. So, yes, we're making a big dent," he said.

After 65th Engineers formed a bucket brigade to pile about 160 rounds in one pit for demolition, Sgt. Erasmo Flores, 22, of San Antonio, Texas, said, "It feels good doing it — we're doing something useful."

Private Chad Ashby, 22, also from Texas, said "the explosion part's cool."

"It's just crazy they left all this stuff out here like this," he added. "Everyone can pick it up and make IEDs out of it."

One hundred pounds of clay-like C4 explosive was wired in strips down the length of the munitions in one pit. Artillery shells in a second pit, including white phosphorous nicknamed "Willie Pete," also were rigged to explode.

After waiting for hours to get the all-clear that no aircraft were near, and with Humvees spread out more than a half mile from the sites to ensure that people — even sheep — were kept away, the Air Force gave the radio warning "Fire in the hole!"

Two sharp explosions about five minutes apart sent mushroom clouds and pieces of smoking shrapnel high in the sky.

"I think the hardest part is I wish we could (destroy more munitions) with less time," Marsh said, "because this is what makes the public safe."

Air Force Staff Sgt. Ray Pomeroy, 29, said artillery shells would be unearthed long after he and the Schofield engineers have left Iraq.

"Just judging by what we found here and how out-of-the-way it is, there are things they are going to uncover for years to come," Pomeroy said. "It's going to be a long time before this country is cleared of the munitions that got stashed here a long time ago."