SADDAM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, April 5: A US tank commander was shot and killed and two other soldiers were wounded on Saturday during a drive through the centre of Baghdad where they encountered intense Iraqi fire, a senior officer said.
“We had one KIA (killed in action),” Colonel David Perkins, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, told newsmen.
Asked how he was killed, Mr Perkins said the commander had sustained a “head wound”.
The second soldier had suffered chest wounds while the third had been shot in the shoulder, Mr Perkins added.
A battalion of some 30 US tanks rolled deep into Baghdad early on Saturday, but Mr Perkins said they had come under heavy fire.
Rocket-propelled grenades had been aimed at the tanks from rooftops while they also came under fire from shop fronts and bridges, the colonel added.
THREE SOLDIERS: Three US soldiers were killed in a vehicle accident at Baghdad’s main airport, now under US control, a US commander said.
Colonel Will Grimsley, commander of the First Brigade of the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said the three were killed late on Friday in “an armoured vehicle incident” but gave no details.
The names of the soldiers were withheld pending notification of relatives.
TWO PILOTS: A US AH-1W “Super Cobra” attack helicopter crashed in central Iraq early on Saturday killing two pilots, the US Central Command announced.
NINE BODIES: Nine bodies recovered during a mission to rescue a US Army private held in southern Iraq are believed to be those of US soldiers, a US military spokeswoman said here on Saturday.
“We believe nine were American,” Major Rumi Nielson-Green said here at US Central Command’s forward planning base.
The US Defence Department in Washington reported on Saturday that eight US soldiers ambushed last month with the recently rescued private Jessica Lynch have been confirmed as killed in action.
US forces discovered 11 bodies in a hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah during an operation in the early hours of April 2 to free Lynch, who had been held prisoner for more than a week.
“We believe the other two bodies were Iraqi and they have been returned to the hospital from whence they came,” Major Nielson-Green said.
She said the remains of the US soldiers were to be returned to Dover Air Force in Maryland on the US east coast for official identification. She was unable to say which unit they had been serving with nor the circumstances surrounding their deaths. —AFP
