US soldier killed in Iraqi grenade attack

Guardian/www.guardian.co.uk

Thursday June 19, 2003

One American soldier was killed and two were injured today when the military ambulance they were travelling in was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. It was the fourth reported attack on US military personnel or property in the last 24 hours and reflects a surge in guerilla activity over the last week.

The ambulance was taking an injured soldier to a field hospital when it was hit at around midday on a highway in al-Iskandariyah, some 20 miles south of Baghdad. US Central Command said the dead and wounded were members of the 804th Medical Brigade, but their identities have not been released. The injured were taken to a US army support hospital in south-west Baghdad.

The latest attack came hours after an Iraqi man was killed and 12 others were injured when a mortar round hit an office in Samarra, north of Baghdad, used by the US-led administration to coordinate humanitarian relief.

Prior to that, there were rocket attacks against a US tank in Samarra and on an army truck in west Baghdad. No Americans were wounded in the incidents, but yesterday one soldier was killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad, and another died on Tuesday after being shot in the back by a sniper while on patrol in the north of the city.

In a statement issued after the mortar attack on Samarra, US central command said: "This is one of numerous incidents recently where Iraqi resistors have attacked coalition forces or coalition provisional authority locations and injured or killed Iraqi citizens."

In a shift of tactics earlier this week, apparently aimed at offices and individuals working with US forces, gunmen fired into the mayor's office and courthouse in Falluja, and a police station in Khaldiyah.

In Baghdad today, mourners fired assault rifles in the air as they brought home the body of Taraq Hussein Mohammed, a 32-year-old former noncommissioned officer in the Iraqi army. He was one of two men shot by US forces during a demonstration of disgruntled former army officers, on the same day that a US soldier was shot dead at a propane distribution point. "Abu Soheib, come back to us," wailed his wife Soheir, using his nickname. "Now there is no salary, and no man," she said according to a report by the Associated Press.

Of course American teenagers being killed several times a week is all worth it because they are over there for a great cause. What was that, now? Defending freedom? Or was it providing security for Israel? Or finding nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction? Or protecting suburbanites from terrorists and high gas prices? I forget, but it must be worth the price because our leader Bushy Tail says so.

I can't wait until he explains it during the election campaign. The sad thing is that the only good these tragic and needless deaths are going to do is to help get Bush defeated.

Fox News hasn't reported this, so it can't be true.

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