Thousands of American troops searched on Sunday for three US soldiers missing in Iraq after an ambush in which al-Qaeda said it seized ”crusader” forces, while a suicide bomber killed 50 people in the Kurdish north.
The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, a group led by al-Qaeda, said in an internet posting it was holding soldiers who survived an attack south of Baghdad that the US military said killed four US troops and one Iraqi army translator.
That attack and the suicide truck bombing came as President George Bush deploys 30 000 more US troops due in Iraq in June in what is seen as a final push to halt a slide into all-out civil war between majority Shi’ites and Sunni Arabs.
Bush is under pressure from Democrats to set a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops in a four-year war that has killed more than 3 300 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Last June, al-Qaeda abducted two US soldiers in the same area where the patrol of seven US soldiers and one Iraqi army interpreter were ambushed on Saturday. Their badly mutilated bodies were found days later.
As US-led troops backed by helicopters and jets combed the rural area south of the capital known as the Sunni ”triangle of death”, a truck bomb killed 50 people and wounded 70 in the northern town of Makhmour, the governor said, in the second attack against Kurdish areas in Iraq in four days.
Kurdish political parties were targeted, police said.
Makhmour is just outside the autonomous Kurdish region, but Kurds want to include it in the region in a future settlement.
Last week, a truck bomb in the city of Arbil, capital of Kurdistan, killed 15 people and wounded more than 100 in an attack claimed by al-Qaeda that sparked fears that the relatively peaceful region would become a target of more violence.
In a statement, Islamic State in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack on the US patrol.
”God has enabled your brothers at the Islamic State in Iraq on Saturday … to clash with a crusader patrol in Mahmudiya area at the southern part of Baghdad,” it said in a statement posted on a website used by insurgent groups.
”Some were detained and some were killed,” it said without giving numbers. ”We will provide the full details of this blessed operation as soon as they are available.”
Patrol ambushed
Major-General William Caldwell, chief spokesperson for the US military in Iraq, told a news conference US troops will make ”every effort available to find our three missing soldiers”.
Residents said the patrol was ambushed by insurgents after it struck a roadside bomb on a rural road in an area of palm groves called Shibaiya, near the town of Yusufiya.
”We saw smoke rise from the area. Three vehicles were on fire and a fourth one had fallen into a canal,” said a farmer.
”US forces cordoned off the area and made arrests,” the farmer told Reuters as US helicopters hovered overhead.
The mayor of Mahmudiya, Muayed al-Ameri, also said the patrol had been ambushed.
Duraid Kashmula, governor of Nineveh province, said the blast in Makhmour killed 50 and wounded 70. He said the bomb targeted a government compound that also houses offices of a Kurdish political party.
Other security sources said the KDP was having a local meeting at the time of the attack. The KDP is the party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region.
In Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said foes Iran and the United States would hold talks in Baghdad aimed at establishing security in Iraq.
In Washington, the White House confirmed US and Iranian officials would meet in Baghdad to discuss Iraq in the next few weeks.
Talks between Iran and the United States, which accuses Tehran of supplying and training Shi’ite militia in Iraq, are rare. The two countries, at loggerheads over Iran’s nuclear programme, have not had diplomatic ties for more than a quarter century. Iran denies US charges it stirs trouble in Iraq. – Reuters