Not what I would call “progress”.
One of Baqouba’s main thoroughfares is so packed with IEDs that the U.S. military is considering declaring it “irrevocably mined,” said Col. Steve Townsend, commander of the Army’s 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.
U.S. forces would then build their own road — right alongside the mined one — and guard it 24 hours a day, said Townsend, 47, from Griffin, Ga.
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The weight of a single soldier is insufficient to trigger such bombs, which may be planted 10 feet underground and packed in makeshift casings such as refrigerators.
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On May 6, a deep-buried IED killed six U.S. soldiers from Townsend’s brigade serving in Baqouba, along with a Russian photographer embedded with them. The blast flipped their Stryker vehicle — an eight-wheeled, 37,000-pound troop carrier — upside down and tore out the interior, killing everyone inside except the driver.