BAGHDAD, Iraq—One U.S. soldier with the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment died and two were wounded Tuesday after Iraqi guerrillas attacked their convoy with a homemade bomb near the restive town of Ramadi, about 75 miles west of the capital of Baghdad, military officials said.
"It looks like this was an IED," an improvised explosive device, said U.S. Army Capt. Jeff Fitzgibbons, a coalition spokesman. "One soldier was treated and released. The other is still undergoing medical treatment."
The convoy was bombed about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the far western end of the so-called Sunni Triangle—which includes Baghdad and towns north and west of the capital—where most attacks on American soldiers have occurred. Ramadi had been relatively quiet in recent weeks, but assaults on American troops have increased as operations to round up loyalists to Saddam Hussein's former regime and other anti-U.S. guerrillas in the area continue.
In the northern Iraq town of Mosul, an American soldier with the 101st Airborne Division was killed and an Iraqi translator was injured when a car struck them. Fitzgibbons said the two men appeared to have been standing on the side of the road when the accident occurred, and that it didn't appear to be a hostile act.
The bombing death brought to 64 the number of U.S. and British troops—58 of them Americans—who have been killed in hostile fire in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1. More than 400 coalition troops, mostly Americans, have been wounded in combat during that period. More than 60 have died in accidents and other nonhostile circumstances.
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(c) 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Iraq