Eleven US soldiers killed in Iraq attacks
Eleven US troops were killed in attacks across Iraq, including a mortar barrage in which six soldiers died and 30 were wounded.
Meanwhile, kidnapped US truck driver Thomas Hamill escaped his Iraqi captors by prying open a door of the house where he was held when a army patrol passed by.
Running a half-mile to the patrol yesterday, Mr Hamill identified himself and led the soldiers to the house, where two Iraqis with an automatic weapon were arrested yesterday, a military spokesman said.
The 43-year-old escaped more than three weeks after he was abducted by gunmen who blasted the convoy he was driving in the outskirts of Baghdad. A US soldier was abducted in the same attack – and remains missing – and at least four of Mr Hamill’s co-workers from a subsidiary of Halliburton were killed.
Mr Hamill had not been heard from since the day after the April 9 attack, when his kidnappers released a video of him standing in front of an Iraqi flag and threatened to kill him within 12 hours unless the US ended its siege of Fallujah.
The latest attacks brought the US death toll to 151 since a wave of violence began on April 1. At least 753 US troops have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
The deadliest incident came yesterday afternoon when a barrage of mortars hit a US base near the city of Ramadi, 60 miles west of the capital, an area patrolled by Marines. Six US service members were killed and 30 others were wounded, the military said.
An attack in north west Baghdad killed two other US soldiers and wounded two Iraqi security officers and another American, the military said.
One US soldier was killed yesterday and 10 were wounded when insurgents set off bombs and opened fire on a coalition base near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, the US military said.
Overnight, Shiite militiamen attacked a US convoy with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades near the southern city of Amarah, 180 miles south of Baghdad. Two soldiers were killed, the military said. Through the night and into Sunday morning, Iraqis set fire to the long line of abandoned vehicles, jumping on the hoods and beating them with sticks.
US troops also exchanged gunfire yesterday near Najaf with militiamen loyal to radical Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr, who has been charged with murder in the death of a rival cleric last year. There were no US casualties.
In the southern city of Basra, a mortar shell exploded late yesterday near the headquarters of the traffic police, killing one civilian, police Lieutenant Colonel Ali Kadhim said. Minutes later, gunmen killed a policeman at a checkpoint, he said. It was unclear if the attacks were coordinated.
The deadly violence came even as US Marines continued to pull back from the siege of the city of Fallujah, between Ramadi and Baghdad. A new Iraqi military force supposed to patrol the city received control of a bridge at the western side of the city yesterday from withdrawing troops, witnesses said.
Marines have completely handed over the southern side of Fallujah to the new “Fallujah Brigade”, a force made up of former soldiers from Saddam Hussein’s army and led by one his former generals.
Marines remain on the northern side of the city, but US commanders have said they will hand over their positions to the Iraqi brigade in the coming days.
The Marines handed their positions over to the Fallujah Brigade under a surprise deal announced on Thursday, after the US came under international pressure to find a peaceful solution in Fallujah.
US commanders say the Fallujah Brigade will crack down on guerrillas in the city. But many Fallujah residents cheered the Marines pull-back as a victory. Masked gunmen moved freely in the streets, waving their guns. Some even stood next to Iraqi policemen, witnesses said.
There appeared to be a move among the US to remove the commander of the brigade, Major General Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a former member of Saddam’s Republican Guards.
Saleh strode into the city on Friday in his old army uniform and was recognised as the brigade commander by the head of the Marines in Iraq, Lieutenant General James Conway.
But General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that Saleh was not and likely would not be the commander, because US officials were still checking into his background. “He has not been vetted yet and probably won’t be the one in command,” General Myers told Fox News Sunday.
There was no word whether Saleh, who effectively commands a force of several hundred armed men between the Marine positions and the city, would accept being removed.
Meanwhile, Mr Hamill was discovered when he approached a patrol from the 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry, part of the New York National Guard, around 11.15am local time near the town of Balad – around 50 miles north of the place where he was abducted, the western Baghdad area of Abu Ghraib.
The truck driver working for KBR – formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root - had an infected gunshot wound in his left arm and was flown by helicopter to Baghdad, said Major Neal O’Brien, a spokesman for US troops in nearby Tikrit.
“Tommy is a courageous hero and we are proud of his resolve, resilience and refusal to give up hope,” Halliburton said in a statement on its website.
