Baghdad, Iraq – The man behind the killing and mutilation of two U.S. soldiers died after a clash with security forces, and authorities arrested three leaders of a group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, a senior Iraqi official said Tuesday.
However, the death and the arrests of three Omar Brigade leaders did little to slow the tit-for-tat killings between Sunni and Shiite militants. In the latest, a Sunni suicide bomber lured Shiite laborers into a van Tuesday and blew it up, killing 53 people.
Meanwhile, a U.N. report said Tuesday that nearly 6,000 civilians were slain across Iraq in May and June, an increase in deaths that coincided with a surge in sectarian attacks.
In the first six months of the year, it said, 14,338 people had been killed.
National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said Diyar Ismail Mahmoud, a Jordanian also known as Abu al-Afghani, died from wounds suffered in a firefight with U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. He did not say when or where the clash occurred.
A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, confirmed al-Rubaie’s statement but refused to elaborate on it.
The bodies of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Pfc. Thomas Tucker of Madras, Ore., of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, were found June 19 not far from a checkpoint on the Euphrates River south of Baghdad, where they were seized three days earlier.
A third soldier, David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was found dead at the checkpoint.
The three were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment – the same unit as five soldiers and one former Army private now facing charges in the alleged rape and murder of a teenage girl in Mahmudiyah last March.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella of extremist groups, claimed in an Internet statement that the three soldiers were killed last month in retaliation for the rape-murder. U.S. officials say they have no evidence to substantiate the claim.
The suicide attack Tuesday took place in Kufa, a Shiite city 100 miles south of Baghdad, where the attacker got men into his van on the promise of jobs, then detonated the vehicle on a bustling street. Local officials said at least 53 people were killed and 105 were wounded.
Police imposed a 24-hour driving ban in Kufa and its twin city Najaf to prevent further attacks.
