American soldiers killed 46 Iraqis and captured eight in three repelled ambushes on US convoys in the central Iraqi city of Samarra yesterday, a military spokesperson said.
At least 18 attackers, five US soldiers and a civilian travelling with the troops were wounded in the deadliest gun battles since the end of the war. The convoys were reportedly carrying large amounts of the new Iraqi currency.
Many of the dead attackers wore uniforms of the Fedayeen, a militia loyal to Saddam Hussein, Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald of the 4th Infantry Division said.
The ambushes came at the end of an extraordinarily violent week for the US and its allies, and the bloodiest month for the occupying forces since the war.
Two South Koreans died yesterday when their car was sprayed with bullets near Tikrit, a day after ambushes killed seven Spanish intelligence agents, two Japanese diplomats and a Colombian contractor. Two US soldiers also died on Saturday in an attack near the Syrian border.
In Baghdad, US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the killings showed a shift in the focus of guerrilla attacks from coalition troops to ”soft targets and civilians”. A coalition spokesperson, Dan Senor, said: ”They are targeting coalition members in the war, had looked on horrified at television pictures of dancing, singing Iraqis kicking the corpses.
In yesterday afternoon’s ambushes on US troops, Col MacDonald said two logistical convoys were moving into Samarra, 96km north of Baghdad, when they were attacked with roadside bombs, small arms fire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The attacks — one on the east side of the city, the other on the west — were simultaneous. In a third attack, about an hour later, a convoy of US military engineers was fired on by four men with automatic rifles in a BMW car. – Guardian Unlimited Â