A National Guardsman from Brooklyn was killed in a vehicle accident in Iraq, the military announced yesterday.
Cpl. Joseph Behnke, 45, died Saturday in Baghdad, officials said.
Behnke was assigned to the Army 258th Field Artillery Regiment, which is stationed in the Bedford Armory in Crown Heights.
The guerrilla war of attrition against U.S. forces and their Iraqi protégés claimed yet another American life yesterday in Baghdad, taking the U.S. combat death toll to 1,000 since last year’s invasion.
At least four Iraqi National Guard troopers also were killed in two incidents, one in the capital and another further south.
Meanwhile, gunmen bombed two churches in the tense Iraqi city of Mosul, fueling fears of ethnic and sectarian unrest ahead of national elections next month.
Iraq’s U.S.-backed interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, reaffirmed the Jan. 30 election date, but raised the prospect of troubled regions taking two or three weeks longer to vote.
The proposed delay, which could not immediately be verified by election officials, would break the Jan. 31 deadline the United Nations has set for the ballot.
And in Saudi Arabia, witnesses to the attack that killed five U.S. consulate workers and four others said the militants screamed, “Where are the Americans? Where are the Americans?” as they stormed into the compound’s inner courtyard.
Wounded U.S. consulate workers provided new details yesterday about an attack that killed nine, injured at least 10 and showed America’s continued vulnerability to terrorist groups capable of conducting sophisticated surveillance, on even the most heavily guarded sites. With Post Wire Services