Hundreds of U.S. soldiers spread Wednesday across the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in the wake of a rocket attack on a mess tent that killed 22 people including 18 Americans.

It was the deadliest single attack against U.S. forces since the start of the war.

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Fourteen of the dead were military personnel, officials said Wednesday.

Four others were employees of a unit of Houston-based Haliburton, which originally reported that seven workers had died in the blast.

Another 72 people were wounded in the attack, 51 of whom were military personnel.

The most seriously injured were flown to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany on Wednesday, but 29 of the injured did not require hospitalization, military officials said.

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Some of the dead and injured were members of a Virginia National Guard unit, but many of the soldiers in Mosul are from Fort Lewis, Wash., and families there were anxiously awaiting word about loved ones after learning of the attack.

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Almost 11,000 soldiers from Washington State are serving in Iraq, and 6,700 of them are from Fort Lewis. About 4,500 are members of Fort Lewis' 1st Brigade, 25th Division Stryker Brigade.

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The military said it was just days away from finishing construction of a bunker to replace the mess tent where a crowd of soldiers and civilians were eating lunch at the time of the attack on Tuesday.

The military was building the reinforced dining area because of concerns of just such an attack.

Mess halls are considered to be prime targets because they're easy to identify and so many troops use them on a predictable schedule.

The military says it's "extremely difficult" to prevent the attacks and many bases require troops to wear body armor and helmets while in a dining hall.

Most schools in Mosul were closed Wednesday in the wake of the attack.

The commander of the multinational force in Iraq told CNN
that experts have flown to Mosul to "do a very detailed explosive
forensics investigation."

Fort Hood and III Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, who commands the multinational forces, said they hope to determine what type of weapon was used in the attack.

Initial reports said a 122-millimeter rocket ripped through the
ceiling of the mess tent, but a radical Sunni Muslim group claiming
responsibility says it was a "martyrdom operation" in what evidently was a reference to a suicide bomber.