July 2, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 1,1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

BAGHDAD, July 1: Four US soldiers were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday, with attacks on the US-led forces showing no sign of letting up and as a series of unexplained blasts left six Iraqis dead on Monday night.

But the Pentagon said it was unaware of any fatal attacks on US troops, reporting instead that six US soldiers were injured in two separate bombing attacks in the Baghdad area.

In the first attack southwest of Baghdad, three soldiers were hurt when their convoy was hit by “an improvised explosive device”, said a Pentagon spokeswoman.

The second attack, also on a convoy of US soldiers, occurred about one hour later in central Baghdad. Three soldiers were wounded in that attack, which US Defence Department officials said also used an unspecified “explosive device”.

The spokeswoman said two Iraqis were also injured in the attacks, one of whom later died in hospital.

According to witnesses, four US soldiers were killed and two others wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on their vehicle by unknown assailants in central Baghdad.

The assailants fired an RPG at a US Humvee light multi-wheeled vehicle near a gas station in the Al Mustansiriya neighbourhood, they said.

MOSQUE BLASTS: US forces also faced charges that explosions at a mosque in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, west of the capital, were caused by a US airstrike.

But the US military said in a statement that “US forces had no involvement with an explosion, which destroyed a building in a mosque courtyard”.

US troops in the area “responded to the scene after notification from a US aircraft that spotted the explosion. The incident is being investigated by the Fallujah police and coalition forces”, it said.

Another US spokesman said he believed “something like an ammunition dump” had exploded next to the mosque.

He added that the US-led forces had been targeted in 10 separate attacks since Saturday.

US troops in Fallujah again came under fire at dawn on Tuesday, in the fifth consecutive day of anti-US strikes in the town. —AFP