25 January 2004	Sunday	02 Zilhaj 1424

BAGHDAD, Jan 24: Seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq in three incidents on Saturday. Four Iraqis also lost their lives in a bomb explosion.

Three of the troops were killed when a car bomb exploded at the entrance to a military base in Khaldiya, 110kms west of Baghdad.

Hours earlier, two soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded as their convoy was passing through a street in Falluja, 50kms west of the capital. And in the small hours of the morning, two soldiers died when a military reconnaissance helicopter went down near Kayyarah, northern Iraq. It was the fourth such crash since the beginning of the month.

The four Iraqis were killed when a bomb exploded in Samarra, 100kms north of Baghdad. The explosion also left seven US soldiers wounded.

All incidents took place in the "Sunni triangle", a region where most of the attacks against the occupation forces and Iraqis seen to be cooperating with them have been happening.

In Khaldiya, witnesses said they saw a car ram a checkpoint outside the base and explode as a number of soldiers were getting out of a vehicle. "Three task force American soldiers were killed and six were wounded when a vehicle-borne explosive device detonated at an installation in Khaldiya," a US Army spokesman said, adding that several Iraqis were also wounded.

The attacks came a day after two UN security experts arrived in Iraq to liaise with US-led authorities on any future return of its staff. The UN pulled international staff out of Iraq last year after two suicide bomb attacks on its Baghdad headquarters.

BLAST: US officials said the Samarra bomb was an attempt to derail council elections in the town. They said the blast was caused when a device placed on the road under a vehicle exploded. The blast, outside the courthouse and town council buildings and close to the police headquarters, scattered wrecked cars and broken glass across a wide area.-Reuters