Posted on 03/13/2004 4:36:16 AM PST by KQQL
TIKRIT, Iraq (AP)--An explosion injured six U.S. soldiers, some seriously, while on patrol north of Baghdad early Saturday, the Army said.
Capt. Tim Crowe said small arms fire erupted after the explosion that occurred in the north of Saddam Hussein's former hometown.
No further details were immediately available.
The soldiers are from the 1st Infantry Division, which is taking over control of security in the Tikrit area Saturday from the outgoing 4th Infantry Division.
AP-NY-03-12-04 2201EST
The answer for Tikrit.
Roadside bombing in Tikrit kills two more U.S. soldiers
Paul Garwood, Associated Press
March 13, 2004 IRAQ0313
TIKRIT, IRAQ — A roadside bomb in Saddam Hussein’s hometown killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded four today , a day after the military said two other soldiers died in a similar explosion elsewhere in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle.
The soldiers killed were patrolling in downtown Tikrit, north of Baghdad, about 5 a.m. in an armored Humvee when a roadside bomb exploded, said Army Capt. Tim Crowe.
The blast destroyed the vehicle. Crowe said small-arms fire erupted in the same area shortly before the explosion, possibly to distract the soldiers.
The four wounded soldiers were evacuated to a military hospital north of Tikrit. It was not immediately clear how serious their injuries were.
After the attack, about 50 soldiers fanned out through the city searching for evidence and asking locals for information about the attack.
The soldiers were from the Army’s 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, which is taking over security in the Tikrit area today.
Roadside bombs have become the main threat to U.S. soldiers on patrol in the Sunni Triangle, a region that has seen some of the fiercest guerrilla fighting.
On Friday, the military said two U.S. soldiers were killed and a third wounded when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb Thursday northeast of Habbiniyah. Another soldier was killed and two others injured earlier Thursday by a homemade bomb in Baqouba.
Also Friday, four Iraqis suspected of killing a pair of U.S. officials and their Iraqi translator appear to be active police officers working with a Saddam Hussein loyalist, a top U.S. military official said. The revelation raises concerns that insurgents are infiltrating Iraqi security forces being trained by U.S. forces.
The four were caught Tuesday south of Baghdad after the slayings along with a former officer from the Saddam-era police forces and a civilian, Maj. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.
The American civilians slain Tuesday with their translator were the first from the U.S. occupation authority to be killed in Iraq. One was Fern Holland, 33, a human rights expert from Oklahoma who worked on women’s issues in the Hillah region. The other was a regional press officer, Robert Zangas, 44, of suburban Pittsburgh.
U.S. troops have been training Iraqi police and other security forces, intending to gradually put them on the front lines against guerrillas.
Coalition spokesman Dan Senor called the policemen’s role in the attack “an exception” and defended what he called a “robust” process of vetting police recruits to try to uncover criminal pasts or links to Saddam’s regime. “But it is not perfect,” he said. “Individuals slip through the cracks. We act to identify it and remove them immediately.”
FBI experts were investigating the attack that killed the three, amid conflicting reports over the shooting outside the town of Hillah, about 35 miles south of the capital. Polish troops patrolling the region said the suspects stopped the victims’ car at a checkpoint and shot them to death. But Kimmitt said the attackers may have been in a second car that ran the coalition staffers off the road.
Reports from Washington Friday suggest that the Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh combat troops for Iraq this fall, it will have little choice but to call on the same soldiers who were part of the spearhead that captured Baghdad last spring.
The 3rd Infantry Division already has been given an official “warning order” to prepare to return as soon as Thanksgiving.
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