Baghdad – Roadside bombs killed five U.S. soldiers in Iraq on Sunday, including four in a single strike, the military said.
In Baghdad, gunmen on rooftops opened fire on Iraqi soldiers, prompting fierce fighting in the narrow streets and alleys of one of the capital’s oldest neighborhoods, a Sunni insurgent stronghold. At least two civilians were killed and four others were wounded in the clashes, police said, as U.S. attack heli copters buzzed overhead.
Four U.S. soldiers were killed and two others were wounded, according to a statement, when an explosion struck their patrol in Diyala province, a religiously mixed area that has seen fierce fighting in recent months.
A roadside bomb also killed a soldier and wounded two others as they were checking for bombs on a road in northwestern Baghdad, the military said.
Thousands of U.S. reinforcements have been sent to the capital and surrounding areas to help Iraqis tame the sectarian violence that flared after the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra more than a year ago.
Sunday’s deaths raised to at least 3,239 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the war started in March 2003 – 114 of those since the security operation started Feb. 14, according to an Associated Press count. In comparison, 123 U.S. troops deaths were reported in the 40 days preceding the start of the plan.
The clashes between gunmen and Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad’s Fadhil neighborhood started about 1:30 p.m. when an attack on Iraqi army positions forced soldiers to call for U.S. assistance, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it had no immediate reports about the fighting.
Suspected Shiite militants attacked a Sunni mosque Sunday in apparent retaliation for one of Saturday’s attacks – a suicide truck bombing against a Shiite mosque that killed 11 people in Haswa, 30 miles south of Baghdad.
The explosion Sunday blew a hole in the roof of the mosque’s minaret but caused no injuries, although two people were wounded after clashes erupted in the area following the blast. Local authorities imposed a curfew after gunmen opened fire on a funeral procession for the victims killed in Saturday’s blast, raising fresh concerns about sectarian violence.
The Islamic State in Iraq, an insurgent umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, purportedly claimed responsibility for three other suicide bombings Saturday near the Anbar province city of Qaim, near the Syrian border, saying in an Internet statement that 45 policemen were killed and 48 were wounded.
The statement could not be independently verified, and police said six people had been killed, including five policemen, and 19 other people wounded in the three attacks against checkpoints and a police station.
At least 31 people were killed or found dead elsewhere in Iraq.
