Nine US soldiers killed in Iraq attacks

8.30am

CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq - Nine US servicemen were killed in Iraq on Sunday, six of them in a mortar attack on a military base in the west of the country, a US military spokesmen said.

A survivor of the mortar attack west of Falluja said he was knocked to the ground by the blast.

"I didn't know who was dead and who was wounded. I knew it was a mortar from the black smoke. There were about 100 people taking care of us. Now I am worried about my boys in the unit. It was a bad day," the 27-year-old American said.

The deaths took to 14 the number of US servicemen killed in Iraq in the first two days of May. In total, 552 soldiers have been killed in action since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

April was the bloodiest month for the US military since the invasion of Iraq in March last year with 129 combat deaths, nearly a quarter of all the Americans killed in action in Iraq and more than during the three-week war which ousted Saddam.

Marine Major T V Johnson said the mortar attack was launched on a military base in western Iraq two hours drive from Falluja, the rebellious city 50km west of Baghdad, but would give no further details.

At a clinic at US Marine headquarters in Camp Falluja just outside the city, the survivor said two mortar bombs landed on the base two days after his unit was attacked with roadside bombs and one mortar bomb.

He said the second mortar bomb to hit the base landed in the middle of his unit as they turned to move away from the first.

"Thirty or 40 of us were turning away after the first mortar hit and then suddenly a second mortar hit," he said.

Near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, one US soldier was killed and 10 were wounded when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb and fired assault rifles at a US base, a US military spokesman said.

Two US soldiers and two members of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps were killed early in the morning in northwest Baghdad.

Two more American soldiers were killed near Amara on Saturday when their convoy came under fire from small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, a senior US military official said on Sunday.

On Saturday, three British soldiers and an Iraqi policemen were wounded in a rare clash between British forces and the Mehdi Army of wanted Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Amara, 365km south of Baghdad following a swoop.

A British military spokesman said numerous individuals had been arrested in a raid which netted "significant amounts of arms, explosives and bomb-making equipment".

He said British forces sustained a number of casualties in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a convoy in the town. A British officer at the scene said three soldiers were wounded, one seriously.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq