BAGHDAD, 5 May 2007 — Four US soldiers were killed and nine others wounded in three separate incidents in Iraq on Thursday, the US military said yesterday. In the deadliest attack, one soldier was killed and six others were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad, the military said in a statement.
Another soldier was killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in western Baghdad in an attack in which an Iraqi translator also died. In western Iraq, two soldiers were killed in combat in the province of Anbar.
Earlier, five Iraqi policemen were killed yesterday when a bomb detonated as they patrolled a Baghdad neighborhood on the frontline of the Iraqi capital’s sectarian war, defense and security sources said.
Two more policemen were wounded as the blast tore through their vehicle in the southwest Amil neighborhood that has been the scene of frequent clashes between Sunni and Shiite gunmen, they said. A massive joint US-Iraq security operation has put more than 80,000 troops on the streets of Baghdad in an effort to quell the violence but the attacks have continued, especially insurgent bombings.
In northern Iraq, a car bomb exploded near the city of Mosul outside the home of Lt. Col. Raad Harush, commander of a local army battalion, injuring him and 13 others, including five family members, said Brig. Gen. Mohammed Al-Wagaa.
In the city of Kirkuk, police raised the death toll from a pair of car bombs targeting the homes of a police officer and a local politician late Thursday to six dead and 41 wounded.
Four of the dead were children, including an infant of five months, as were most of the wounded.
US forces detained 16 suspected Iraqi insurgents with links to Iran during a raid in a Shiite stronghold in Baghdad yesterday, the US military said. A weapons cache, which included Iranian rockets, was also found in a separate operation south of the capital, it said. The military said the raid in Baghdad’s Sadr City targeted suspected members of a cell known for facilitating the transport of sophisticated bombs, known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran.
They were also suspected of moving militants from Iraq to Iran for training, it said. “Intelligence reports also indicate the secret cell has ties to a kidnapping network that conducts attacks within Iraq as well as interactions with rogue elements throughout Iraq and into Iran,” a US military statement said. US soldiers also found a weapons cache, which included seven Iranian rockets and an Iranian mortar, near Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad.
The Washington Post newspaper reported that attacks using deadly, armor-piercing EFPs had risen to an all-time high of 65 in April, according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq.
