Baghdad – The U.S. military said Sunday that 14 American soldiers were killed over the past three days, including four in a single roadside bombing and another struck by a suicide bomber while on a foot patrol.
The blast that killed the four U.S. soldiers occurred Sunday as the troops were conducting a cordon-and-search operation northwest of Baghdad. Two other soldiers were killed and five wounded along with an Iraqi interpreter in two separate roadside bombings Sunday, the military said.
In the boldest attack, a U.S. soldier was killed Friday when the patrol approached two suspicious men for questioning near a mosque southwest of Baghdad and one of the suspects blew himself up. Military spokesman Maj. Webster Wright said U.S. troops fired at the second suspect after he began acting aggressively, and the gunfire detonated his suicide vest.
“Our initial analysis is that these guys were al-Qaeda and were planning to launch attacks into Baghdad,” Wright said in an e-mailed statement.
Seven other soldiers were killed in a series of attacks across Iraq on Saturday.
Combined with the previously announced death of a U.S. soldier in central Baghdad on Friday, it was a deadly start for June. May was the third-bloodiest month since the war began in March 2003, with 127 troop deaths reported.
A car bomb exploded outside a U.S. base near the volatile city of Baqubah, leaving a number of troops gasping for air and suffering from eye irritations, the military said. It did not confirm a report in the Los Angeles Times that the car was carrying chlorine canisters and said the soldiers who were sickened had been treated and returned to duty.
The attacks came days after the Pentagon announced the completion of the troop buildup ordered by President Bush in January, raising the total number of troops in Iraq to about 150,000.
Sectarian violence persisted against Iraqis as well, with a car exploding in the predominantly Shiite enclave of Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad. At least 10 people were killed. Gunmen at a fake checkpoint in Baqubah, 35 miles north of Baghdad, killed two passengers and wounded eight others. At least 73 other Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide, including 31 bullet-riddled bodies of men who were apparent victims of death squads usually believed to be run by Shiite militias.
