Five U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in separate bombings in Iraq’s “Sunni Triangle” west of Baghdad, officials said.
In Khaldiyah, a car bomb killed three GIs and wounded six others at a U.S. checkpoint near a bridge across the Euphrates river.
At least eight Iraqis were also injured in the apparent suicide blast in front of a U.S. Army Humvee trying to block it.
Earlier yesterday, two other American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb that struck their convoy near Fallujah.
In a third attack, a truck bomb narrowly missed a U.S. military police patrol near government buildings in Samarra.
Four Iraqis were killed in the blast, which wounded 33 people, including seven U.S. troops.
Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier patrolling the upscale Mansour neighborhood west of the Tigris river was wounded by a sniper’s bullet.
Yesterday’s bloodshed came as U.N. security experts began studying the possibility of returning international staffers to the war-torn country to help in its transformation to democracy.
They were withdrawn from Iraq in October after two attacks on the U.N headquarters, one of which killed 22 people, including top envoy Sergio Vieira De Mello.
Meanwhile, top U.S. military brass said coalition forces are making strides in their search for Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a senior official in the former regime who is now the most wanted man in Iraq.
The Saddam Hussein confidant is believed to be organizing insurgents in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra and Tikrit.
With Post Wire Services