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Baghdad: Fourteen US soldiers have been killed
in three days of fighting, the military announced on Thursday, as
US-led troops continued to press simultaneous offensives in and
around Baghdad.
The news came hours after a
suicide bomber exploded an oil tanker south of Iraq’s oil-rich
city of Kirkuk, killing 15 people and wounding 66, including
policemen and local politicians.
The bomber blew up the tanker
outside police headquarters and a cluster of government buildings in
Suleiman Beg, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) from the northern city
of Kirkuk, police and hospital officials said.
“Several of the wounded are
city council members and police officers, including the chief of
police in Suleiman Beg, Hassan Ali Al-Bayati,” a local hospital
official said.
The latest attack—two days
after a Baghdad bomb killed 87 people—was carried out as the US
military pressed an air and ground assault on suspected al-Qaeda
strongholds north of Baghdad.
The military said by Thursday it
had killed 41 people it described as insurgents and had destroyed
some of their hideouts in the restive Diyala province, long
considered one of the deadliest areas in Iraq.
But as US troops have channeled
a recently completed troop “surge” into a belt of insurgent
strongholds around the capital they have met stiff resistance and
suffered increasing casualties.
On Thursday five US soldiers, an
Iraqi interpreter, and three Iraqi civilians were killed when a
roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in northeastern Baghdad,
the military said in a statement.
A sixth soldier and two Iraqi
civilians were wounded in the attack.
Another soldier was killed and
three others wounded in Baghdad on Thursday when their vehicle was
hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
On Wednesday four soldiers were
killed in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, and two marines were
killed in combat operations in the western Anbar province.
Another two soldiers were killed
by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Tuesday, the US military said on
Thursday, correcting a previous report.
The latest deaths bring total US
casualties for this month alone to 59, with at least 3,536 since the
March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon
figures.
Around 10,000 US and Iraqi troops
backed by attack helicopters and armored vehicles continued to
battle alleged al-Qaeda militants in Diyala.
Operation Arrowhead Ripper is
viewed as the biggest full-fledged assault on insurgents since the
November 2004 operation against the former rebel town of Fallujah
and is aimed at destroying the group’s strongholds in the
province.
“Our combined forces have begun
destroying al-Qaeda operatives and their resources in and around
Diyala province,” US commander Brigadier General Mick Bednarek
said in a statement released overnight.
The forces destroyed three
“enemy safe houses” and a number of roadside bombs, it said,
adding ground forces also found a house booby-trapped with homemade
explosives in the Khatoon neighborhood near Baquba.
The military said air support was
called in to destroy the house but a bomb missed its target and
struck another nearby structure wounding 11 civilians.
The original target was later
destroyed with missiles which produced a “large secondary
explosion confirming the house as containing a large amount of
explosives”, it said.
Ethnically mixed Diyala and its
capital of Baquba have emerged as hotbeds of al-Qaeda since Iraq’s
sectarian conflict broke out in earnest in February 2006.
In a separate operation southeast
of Baghdad the military captured more than 60 suspected insurgents
and destroyed 17 boats allegedly being used to transport fighters
and weapons.
The US military says it expects
the present offensives to trigger a counter-attack from al-Qaeda.
 --AFP
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