Two US soldiers hurt in Baghdad attack

BAGHDAD - Two United States soldiers were wounded when an American troop carrier came under attack at a Baghdad mosque yesterday, the first day of a two-week gun amnesty offered by US forces in Iraq.

The soldiers were wounded in an explosion outside the vast Abu Hanifa mosque in a Sunni Muslim district. American troops later shot and killed an Iraqi civilian.

The violence, the latest of several attacks on US forces in the past few days, underlined the urgency of efforts to restore security more than seven weeks after Saddam Hussein's fall.

At the mosque, First Sergeant Larry Caldwell said the soldiers were wounded when the vehicle was hit, probably with plastic explosive. Snipers then fired on the Americans from rooftops.

US soldiers shot and killed an Iraqi man, who residents said was walking to the mosque to pray. "He came towards us. We told him to get down. He didn't," Caldwell said.

Most attacks on US forces have occurred in the Sunni heartlands of central Iraq where the collapse of Saddam's Sunni-dominated Government was not universally welcomed.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq