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McClatchy Newspapers BAGHDAD — U.S. troops stationed at an outpost in southern Iraq heard a chilling whistle, and then a 60-pound airborne bomb punched through a concrete blast wall and sent shrapnel flying, wounding three Americans.
Explosions are commonplace in Iraq, but this was no ordinary attack. The U.S. military said Friday that militants who launched the Jan. 12 attack on a joint U.S.-Iraqi compound used an unusual weapon called an IRAM, for Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munition. Sometimes called "flying IEDs," IRAMs are a potentially deadlier incarnation of the garden-variety Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and Afghanistan — they're short-range projectiles that catapult toward unsuspecting targets.
Two IRAMs flew into the outpost in the city of Amarah in a puzzling reappearance of a weapon that's been used only 14 times since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, according to the U.S. military. Most of the earlier attacks occurred in eastern Baghdad more than 18 months ago, at the height of violence related to Shiite Muslim militias. The more recent attacks, however, were launched in southern Iraq's Maysan Province, which borders Iran.
In the most recent incident, only one of the IRAMs exploded, leaving a 12-foot crater in the ground, said Maj. Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the 4th Brigade of the Army's 1st Armored Division, which is based in Fort Bliss, Texas, and is operating in Maysan.
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