Three United States soldiers were killed and two wounded late on Thursday in an ambush near the hometown of Saddam Hussein, the latest attack since the release of a new purported message of defiance by the ousted leader.
Corporal Vernon O’Donnell, of the US 4th Infantry Division, said the troops came under small-arms fire 8km south of the central town of Tikrit that is still a bastion of support for Saddam.
”They were inspecting a suspected mortar launch site when the ambush occurred,” O’Donnell said, adding that the toll was three dead and two wounded.
The clash between 10pm and 11pm (6pm and 7pm GMT) capped a day of assaults on US personnel, including a bomb and rocket-propelled grenade attack on a convoy west of Baghdad that witnesses said left heavy US casualties.
The US-led occupation took a blow on another front on 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.
Iraqi residents said the attacks were likely inspired by Wednesday’s release of a new audiotape in which a man identified as Saddam exhorted Iraqis to step up their resistance and warned US troops to quit the country.
Between 200 and 300 Iraqis took to the streets of the town of Khaldiyah, 80km west of Baghdad, to exult in the attack on the American convoy and pledge allegiance to the dictator chased from power in April.
”With our blood, with our soul, we will sacrifice for you O Saddam” and ”Saddam is the glory of my country”, they chanted.
Others danced joyously around at least two US vehicles swallowed by flames and thick black smoke.
No full, official toll was available from the mid-afternoon incident on Thursday in Khaldiyah, but the witnesses reported seeing between four and eight badly burned US 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 as its limped to a nearby base.
The US 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.
US soldiers also shot up a car belonging to the US news agency Associated Press (AP) 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 US soldiers inside.
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 rocket-propelled grenades as it continued on its way.
The attack occurred with tensions high in the region west of Baghdad that is dominated by Sunni Muslims, home to many die-hard Saddam supporters and dubbed by locals a ”triangle of death” for US troops.
On Wednesday, US troops spooked by celebratory fire at an Iraqi wedding opened fire and killed a teenager and wounded six other people in the town of Fallujah east of Khaldiyah, hospital officials said.
Five day earlier, US soldiers shot dead nine Iraqi security officers in a ”friendly fire” incident in Fallujah that prompted an apology from the US command and sparked cries of vengeance from local residents.
Other attacks Thursday targeted US forces as far north as the city of Mosul, 400km from Baghdad. But only two people were reported wounded slightly in these other incidents.
The five-month-old US-led occupation of Iraq has been plagued by attacks on infrastructure as well as coalition personnel, and officials were investigating a fire that erupted on 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 US ground forces in Iraq, said of the blaze about 200km north of Baghdad.
The pipeline linking the oil centre of Kirkuk further to the north with the Baiji refinery carries most of the oil that is exported to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. — Sapa-AFP