Two US soldiers shot and mutilated in Iraq

By SEB WALKER

MOSUL, Iraq - Two US soldiers were shot in their car in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday and their bodies mutilated and looted by a crowd of Iraqis.

Another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad.

A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said two of its soldiers were shot in the middle of the day in Mosul as they drove from one base in the city to another.

Witnesses said that after the shooting the soldiers were stabbed and their throats slit. A crowd looted the civilian car they were driving and tried to set it ablaze.

One man brandished a fistful of bloodstained Iraqi dinars he said were taken from the soldiers.

In Baghdad, US army spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said he would not discuss how the soldiers died.

A local fireman who ran to the scene after hearing gunfire said he saw a crowd of Iraqis ransacking the car.

"People were taking things from the car. I looked inside and saw two soldiers with blood all over them," he said.

US troops quickly surrounded the area, in the crowded centre of the city, and interrogated bystanders.

"They hate the Americans in this area," said a man waiting for petrol near the scene. "They've been doing many raids around here and so it's not surprising they've been attacked."

In Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, a 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated as their convoy drove past, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald said.

The attacks came a day after suicide bombers detonated cars packed with explosives outside Baquba's police headquarters and a police station in the nearby town of Khan Bani Saad.

MacDonald said 17 Iraqis were killed in the bombings, one fewer than initially thought.

Since Washington declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1, 185 US soldiers have been killed in action. Despite the steadily rising toll, a senior US general said during a visit to Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit that forces would stay until the job was done and Iraq was stable.

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, also dismissed media reports that Washington planned to keep 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2006.

"To put a date on that would be wrong, to put a number on it would be wrong," Pace said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq