BAGHDAD, 29 August 2003 — A British soldier was killed and 13 US soldiers were injured in fresh attacks in Iraq as anti-coalition violence continued unabated.
Against this backdrop of continuing anti-coalition violence, and after Washington said it might possibly hand some peacekeeping responsibilities over to the United Nations, France called for a “real international force” in Iraq.
The British soldier was killed and another wounded in the southeastern province of Maysan, near the border with Iran, when a convoy of troops was confronted on Wednesday by a mob, a British military spokesman said.
The troops were returning from a raid on the town of Ali Al-Gharbi, where they had arrested two men for “anti-coalition” activities, spokesman Maj. Charlie Mayo said.
About 40 km (25 miles) south, they were confronted by a roadblock of Iraqi vehicles near the village of Ali Al-Sharqi at around 9:45 p.m. (1745 GMT). They then took another road but were again blocked by a crowd of some 30 tribesmen.
The soldiers got out and continued on foot, but were surrounded on all sides. They fired warning shots, and the crowd returned fire with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, killing the soldier and severely wounding the other.
The death brought to 11 the number of British soldiers killed in Iraq since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.
Yesterday, eight US soldiers were wounded, four in an attack in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, 60 km (40 miles) west of Baghdad, and the others on a road north of the capital, a military spokesman said.
“At 1:45 p.m., four soldiers were wounded in Fallujah when an improvised explosive device blew up beneath the bridge and all were evacuated to a medical facility,” the spokesman said.
A military convoy also came under fire on the road between Kirkuk and Balad, north of Baghdad, leaving four people wounded, the spokesman said.
“They were attacked by three to four men traveling in a white Datsun truck,” the spokesman said.
On Wednesday, five US soldiers and an Iraqi were wounded in a mortar attack north of Baghdad airport. “The wounded were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital,” he added.
The attacks followed the earlier killings of two US soldiers around Baghdad, a regular battlefield in the war of attrition between the coalition and guerrilla fighters.
The US Army’s 4th Infantry Division detained 17 more people north of Baghdad as it scoured the countryside for criminals and Saddam Hussein’s henchmen on the third day of its Operation Ivy Needle, a military spokesman said.
Soldiers also discovered a large weapons cache, including more than 300 mortar rounds, Lt. Col. Bill MacDonald, based in Tikrit some 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said.
