U.S. troops kill man on Iran-Iraq border
The London Free Press, Canada
2004-03-15
BAGHDAD -- U.S. troops killed one uniformed man and injured another -- possibly Iranian border guards -- in a shootout on the Iran-Iraq border yesterday, the U.S. army said. U.S. soldiers based in Iraq were questioning two suspected fertilizer smugglers in a buffer area between two checkpoints when they were attacked by three men in green and brown uniforms, said a U.S. official in Tikrit, Iraq. The gunmen fired from the Iranian side of the border.
The U.S. troops returned fire, killing one man and wounding another, the official said. The third man fled.
The clash occurred northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, but the exact location was unclear.
Meanwhile, roadside bombs killed four U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, raising to six the toll from attacks in Iraq this weekend, the military said yesterday.
Also in Baghdad, hundreds of Iraqis mourned the death of a Shiite politician's relative in a bomb blast in his shop Saturday.
In Washington yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the decision to go to war in Iraq, saying intelligence before the U.S.-led invasion was not "cooked," even though inspectors have not found banned weapons.
"We may not find the stockpiles. They may not exist any longer, but let's not suggest that we knew this," Powell said on ABC's This Week.
"We went to the United Nations, we went to the world, with the best information we had. Nothing that was cooked."
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/03/15/382622.html