BAGHDAD, 13 May 2007 — Five US soldiers were killed and two were missing and presumed captured when their group of seven that included an Iraqi interpreter was attacked during a patrol in an Al-Qaeda stronghold south of Baghdad yesterday.
The attack, one of the worst against American ground forces since a US-backed security crackdown began in Baghdad three months ago, took place near the town of Mahmudiya, in the same area where two US soldiers were captured by Al-Qaeda insurgents last year. Their mutilated bodies were later found. US forces launched a search operation for the missing soldiers, using helicopters, unmanned drones and jets and setting up checkpoints in the area.
Residents of Mahmudiya, an area of orchards and palm groves that is a bastion of Sunni Arab militants including Al-Qaeda, said gunmen wearing Iraqi Army uniform had stopped a US patrol comprising three Humvees at a fake checkpoint before attacking the soldiers.
Last June, Al-Qaeda militants captured two US soldiers in nearby Yusufiya in an attack on a US checkpoint in which a third US soldier was killed. The mutilated and booby-trapped bodies of the two US soldiers were found days later.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, chief military spokesman for US forces in Iraq, was quoted in a statement as saying that 15 minutes after yesterday’s explosion a US drone observed two burning vehicles. A rapid-reaction force arrived in the area one hour after the attack, Caldwell said.
“The quick reaction force reported finding five soldiers killed in action and three others missing,” Caldwell said. He said US forces were using “every means at our disposal to find the missing soldiers, and we will continue these efforts until all are accounted for.”
The attack comes at a time when US President George W. Bush is facing increasing pressure from Democrats to set a timetables for withdrawing American troops in a war that has killed more than 3,300 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis since the invasion in 2003.
Under the Baghdad offensive, seen as a last-ditch attempt to halt Iraq’s slide into all-out civil war between majority Shiites and Sunni Arabs, thousands of extra US and Iraqi troops have poured across the capital and surrounding areas.
