BAGHDAD, 10 June 2003 — Iraq’s new rulers yesterday expressed hope Baghdad would resume oil exports next week, but the death of a US soldier in an ambush starkly underlined the anarchy still plaguing the country two months after the collapse of the old regime.
The acting head of the Oil Ministry, Thamir Ghadhban, said he hoped by the end of the month that Iraq would be exporting some two-thirds of a total oil output that would reach 1.5 million barrels per day.
Meanwhile, US forces, under daily attack, lost another soldier to Iraqi resistance fire, Central Command (Centcom) said yesterday, as sporadic violence plagues coalition peace efforts two months after the old regime fell.
In an attack typifying the difficulties facing the occupiers since the conquest of Baghdad on April 9, Iraqi gunmen pretending to need urgent medical treatment shot dead a US soldier late Sunday at a checkpoint in Al-Qaim, hard by the Syrian border.
The soldier was the 29th US service personnel to have died in fighting or accidents in Iraq since May 1, when US President George W. Bush declared the war on Iraq effectively over, according to an AFP toll.
One of the gunmen was killed and another captured after troops returned fire, but at least one other attacker escaped in a car, sparking a manhunt in the western town overnight, a statement said.
“An undetermined number of assailants pulled up to the checkpoint in a vehicle and requested help for a ‘sick’ person in the car.
Two people armed with pistols then exited the vehicle and shot dead the soldier,” it said.
Centcom said an investigation was under way and that US troops were pressing on with efforts to “locate the vehicle and additional suspect(s) and bring them to justice.”
Outside Baghdad, soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division killed two Iraqis in a raid that netted three rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 16 grenades, a mortar, three handguns, and a Kalashnikov, Centcom said.
