The news reached central Ohio long before the names of the dead. A thunderous explosion, an armored vehicle blown apart, another clutch of Marine Reservists from Lima Company killed in the Iraqi maelstrom.

Nine men who left behind their day jobs to report to duty with the Columbus-based fighting unit died in an insurgent bombing yesterday.

"Every day now in Columbus, it's just a little more personal," said Mike Brown, spokesman for Mayor Michael B. Coleman, whose son serves with Lima Company. "It's been a rough day with a lot of tension."

He spoke of recent military funerals that have been solemn, stately and all too frequent.

"Majestic," he said, "and absolutely overwhelming in sadness."

Officers at the headquarters of Lima Company, part of the 3rd Battalion of the 25th Marine Regiment, mobilized to deliver news that 150 families were praying not to hear. Marines rang doorbells and regretted to inform mothers, fathers, siblings and spouses.

"Right now, we're making notifications," said 1st Sgt. James Halbig late yesterday afternoon. He figured it was the fifth time he had been through the drill, but things blur.

"It's still pretty tough. You're the strong one," Halbig said. "You have to show the strength of the Marine Corps, while in dealing with families you have to be compassionate. You want to grab them and hug them, but at this time they just need someone to be strong for them."

UNIT HIT HARD

Lima Company, one of the hardest-hit reserve units in a war that has claimed more than 1,800 U.S. military lives, is composed of construction workers and college students alike. The mayor, said his spokesman, was another worried parent asking whether his son had survived.

In May, a firefight in Ubaydi near the Syrian border killed Cpl. Dustin A. Derga and a Marine from another company. Two days later, the same squad from Lima's 1st Platoon rolled over a roadside bomb in an Amtrack troop carrier. Four Marines died and nearly a dozen were wounded.

This week, word flowed from Iraq that five members of the 3rd Battalion, headquartered in Brook Park, Ohio, had been attacked and killed by small-arms fire. Then came yesterday's news that 14 Marines and their Iraqi interpreter died when a large bomb flipped their vehicle.

It was the deadliest roadside bombing of the Iraq war.

The Marines were part of a convoy that was attacked on a desert road outside the western town of Haditha, one witness said. Rolling in armored vehicle after armored vehicle, the patrol was nearing the entrance to the town when a brilliant flash erupted in the middle of the convoy.

"Huge fire and dust rose from the place of the explosion," said Saad Mijbil, a motorist who said he witnessed the bombing and was later hospitalized with bullet wounds sustained in the chaotic aftermath.

The bomb blew apart the armored personnel carrier and ignited its load of fuel and explosives. Though he was 80 yards away, Mijbil said, the bomb blast had been strong enough to break the rear window of his pickup truck.

The U.S. military gave few details of the attack.

Nine of the dead Marines were members of Lima Company — part of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, a reserve unit from Ohio that had been sent to the Syrian border to play a lead role in shutting off the main route for foreign gunmen and suicide bombers entering Iraq.

"They used to call it Lucky Lima," the company's commander, Maj. Steve Lawson, said in May after an urban ambush and a roadside bomb on successive days had killed or wounded every member of one of the Lima Company's three squads. "That turned around and bit us."

'LOSING COUNT'

As it turned out, Lima Company and the rest of the 25th Regiment were beginning four months of bombings and ambushes in the grimy Euphrates River towns where U.S. commanders say foreign insurgents had moved freely. During the tour, 16 members of Lima Company have been killed, according to a military spokesman in Columbus, Ohio, 1st Sgt. James Halbig.

As a whole, the 25th Regiment suffered 20 dead in May and June. Then, with yesterday's bombing and two attacks Monday, the number of dead more than doubled to 41.

"Let me ask you, is the 3rd Battalion of the 25th Marines fighting the entire war?" demanded Ken Hiltz, an Ohio police officer and former Marine who has friends in Lima Company. "This battalion is decimated. I'm just losing count."

The attacks and the fatalities have come in numbers no one could have imagined when Lima Company mustered. The unit drew a particularly hard-fought slice of turf and, as one Marine mother said, "they have been involved in pretty much every mission in that part of Iraq."

"It's getting to be very tough," said Jody Davids, whose son Wesley, a Lima Company lance corporal, was killed by a roadside bomb on May 11. "It's just so concentrated in this part of Ohio."

POLITICAL ISSUE

The deaths yesterday appear likely to put Ohio behind only California and Texas as the states with the highest casualties since the war began in March 2003. Downstate, an Iraq war veteran who criticized President Bush's handling of the conflict narrowly lost a race for Congress this week after making Iraq the centerpiece of his campaign.

In a district that has gone Republican for more than 30 years, Paul Hackett, a Democrat and Marine Reservist, got 48 percent of the votes, losing to Republican Jean Schmidt by about 4,000 out of 112,000 cast. He lambasted Bush for saying of Iraqi militants in July 2003, "Bring 'em on."

Just last week from Iraq, Marine Lance Cpl. Edward Schroeder e-mailed his parents in Cleveland. Two members of his unit had been killed.

"He wanted to let us know as fast as he could that he was OK, and that we didn't worry," his mother, Rosemary Palmer, told USA Today. "We worried all the time."

Yesterday they received the news they dreaded. Edward had been killed. He was 23.

Palmer said her son joined while a student at Ohio State, a couple months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"He chose the Marines because for young boys the Marines are the ones to go to. If you can survive basic training it proves your manhood," she said.

Lima Company supporters are counting the days until their Marines come home. Families will attend a planning session this month. Davids, who views the end of the deployment as bittersweet, is cheered by the messages that reach Ohio from the Iraqi desert.

"The dedication to the cause is something to admire," Davids said. "How proud we are of these young men, and what they continue to do and what they stand for."

USA Today contributed to this story.