Marine shot dead at Baghdad checkpoint
A US Marine was shot dead at a Baghdad checkpoint by a man carrying a Syrian identification card, US Central Command said today.
The Marine, from the First Marine Expeditionary Force, was guarding a checkpoint at a medical facility when two men, posing as landscape workers, approached him yesterday.
One man shot the Marine and soldiers nearby shot dead the Syrian man while the second attacker fled.
The name of the dead Marine was being withheld while his next of kin were being informed.
US troops in Iraq have been on high alert at checkpoints across Iraq.
Early in the war, a bomber posing as a taxi driver pulled up to a roadblock north of Najaf, waved to American troops for help, then blew up his vehicle up as they approached, killing four. On Thursday, four US Marines and a medical corpsman were wounded when a vehicle blew up near a Baghdad checkpoint.
Underscoring the threat, US Marines patrolling the a school in the capital early yesterday discovered more than 40 suicide bomb vests stuffed with explosives and ball bearings.
In another sign of the threat of suicide attacks, US forces stopped a bus later in the day near the Syrian border that was carrying 59 men of military age who had with them 630,000 in US 100 bills and a letter offering a reward for killing American soldiers.
