BAGHDAD, 14 October 2003 — Three more US soldiers were killed and the oil minister escaped an assassination attempt as violence continued in occupied Iraq yesterday.
One American soldier was killed and two were wounded when attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their patrol in Tikrit. A second soldier was killed and another wounded when their vehicle struck a land mine in Beiji, 120 miles (195 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
In the third attack, guerrillas ambushed a US military convoy in the town of Jalawla, 120 km northeast of Baghdad, killing one American soldier and wounding two others.
The latest deaths brought to 97 the number of US soldiers known to have been killed in hostile action since May 1, when US President George W. Bush declared major combat over.
Also yesterday, four British soldiers were slightly injured in two separate explosions in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, according to the British military.
Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Al-Uloom and an aide to Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi escaped an assassination attempt in Baghdad hours after a deadly bombing in the capital, a council source said. “Bahr Al-Uloom and Nabil Al-Musawi, Chalabi’s deputy on the Governing Council, were attacked in the Al-Mansur district at around 7:30 p.m. Sunday,” the source said. “The two men were traveling in the same car in a five-vehicle convoy when the motorcade came under fire from a speeding car,” he said.
At the United Nations, diplomats said a new US draft resolution submitted yesterday called on Iraq’s Governing Council to fix a timeline by Dec. 15 for the transfer of power to Iraqis.
A Council envoy described the changes in the latest US draft as significant. “It goes quite a way toward answering Council members’ concerns,” the envoy said.
