Iraqi ambushes kill 3, injure 4

From combined dispatches

TIKRIT, Iraq — Guerrillas killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded four more in a spate of ambushes just one day after a purported message from Saddam Hussein called for intensified attacks on American troops.

The three fatalities took place in a village just south of Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, where soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division came under small-arms fire, Lt. Col. William McDonald told the Associated Press. Two soldiers were wounded in that attack.

Military officials reported two other soldiers wounded in two ambushes near Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, one of which led to a three-hour firefight.

Witnesses told Agence France-Presse they saw between four and eight badly burned U.S. soldiers pulled out of a military vehicle after it hit a roadside bomb, and said it was part of a convoy that was pounded with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) as it limped to a nearby base. U.S. officials did not confirm the account.

In the nearby town of Fallujah, witnesses said an American patrol opened fire on guests at a wedding, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding six persons, after mistaking celebratory gunfire for an attack.

The violence heightened tensions in the “Sunni triangle,” a belt of central Iraq that has been the heart of resistance against the American-led occupation. U.S. soldiers in the region are very jumpy, caught in what has become a guerrilla war.

North of Baghdad, fire raged at an oil pipeline after an explosion at the site, the U.S. military said, raising concerns that it was the latest in a series of sabotage attacks. The pipeline carries crude oil from fields near Kirkuk to Iraq’s largest refinery at Beiji.

The soldiers killed near Tikrit were part of a patrol investigating a site suspected of being used to launch RPGs, Col. McDonald said. He gave no further details and did not say if any Iraqis were killed in the firefight.

Khaldiya, where two other ambushes took place, is the same town whose police chief, Col. Khedeir Mekhalef Ali, was fatally shot Monday while driving home from work.

The first attack occurred when a roadside bomb exploded as a military convoy passed on Khaldiya’s main street. Gunmen then opened fire from unknown positions at the Americans. Initially, the U.S. soldiers shot back with no obvious targets — often at anything they felt threatening — as they waited for reinforcements, a witness said.

An Associated Press driver saw a young man, still alive after being shot in the chest, being placed in a taxi. An AP reporter and photographer covering the incident were fired on, but neither was hurt.

Photographer Karim Kadim and his driver ran to safety from their car after an American tank trained its machine gun on the vehicle. It was subsequently hit about 20 times, blowing out the windshield and flattening all the tires. The reporter ran around the corner of a building as a tank fired three rounds from its .50-caliber machine gun in his direction.

Five U.S. tanks, two Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 40 troops surrounded the neighborhood from which gunmen opened fire, an AP reporter in Khaldiya said. Helicopters hovered above as a transport truck destroyed in the attack smoldered.

Story Continues →