Three U.S. Soldiers Killed In New Iraq Ambush

Corporal Vernon O’Donnell, of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, said the troops came under small-arms fire eight kilometers (five miles) south of the central town of Tikrit, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

"They were inspecting a suspected mortar launch site when the ambush occurred," O’Donnell told AFP, adding that the toll was three dead and two wounded.

The clash between 10:00 pm and 11:00 pm (1800-1900 GMT) capped a day of assaults on U.S. occupation forces, including a bomb and rocket-propelled grenade attack on a convoy west of Baghdad that witnesses said left heavy U.S. casualties.

The U.S.-led occupation took a blow on another front Thursday as a fire erupted at an oil pipeline north of Baghdad. US officials could not confirm whether it was a new act of sabotage.

The attacks came amid high tensions in the region, with U.S. troops shooting dead a teenager and wounding six other people late Wednesday, September 17, in Fallujah while they were celebrating a wedding.

On Saturday, September 13, the U.S. military issued an ‘apology’ after nine security guards from Fallujah were killed the previous day when U.S. troops opened fire as the guards were chasing thieves.
The attacks also came after Wednesday’s release of a new audiotape in which a man identified as Saddam exhorted Iraqis to step up their resistance and warned U.S. troops to quit the country.

Some 200-300 Iraqis took to the streets of the town of Khaldiyah, 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Baghdad, to exult in the attack on the American convoy and pledge allegiance to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

No full, official toll was available from the mid-afternoon incident Thursday in Khaldiyah, but the witnesses reported seeing between four and eight badly burned U.S. soldiers pulled out of one military vehicle engulfed in flames.

Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television said in an unconfirmed report that eight Americans were killed when the convoy hit a roadside bomb and was pelted with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) as its limped to a nearby base.

The U.S. military would not confirm accounts of heavy casualties but said two soldiers were wounded and three vehicles damaged by a bomb and small-arms fire near the town of Ramadi west of Khaldiyah.

U.S. soldiers also shot up a car belonging to the U.S. news agency Associated Press when its reporters tried to film a burning vehicle in Khaldiyah, the AP staffers said. The two reporters and driver, all Iraqis, were unhurt.

Witnesses said the attack was triggered by a bomb that went off underneath an American vehicle, setting it afire with about 10 U.S. soldiers inside.

Local resident Mahmud Ali saw eight burned troops taken from the bombed vehicle hit while the convoy was passing through Khaldiyah en route from the town of Fallujah toward Ramadi.

Yusuf Ali, 40, no relation, said he saw four victims.

The Americans tried to seal off the road and call in reinforcements but the convoy was hit at least twice by RPGs as it continued on its way.

Other attacks Thursday targeted U.S. forces as far north as the city of Mosul, 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Baghdad. But only two people were reported wounded slightly in these other incidents.

The five-month-old U.S.-led occupation of Iraq has been plagued by attacks on infrastructure as well as occupation troops, and officials were investigating a fire that erupted Thursday at a pipeline near the oil hub of Baiji.

"We have not established if it was sabotage or not," Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, said of the blaze about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Baghdad.

The pipeline linking the oil center of Kirkuk further to the north with the Baiji refinery carries most of the oil that is exported to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.