BAGHDAD, Dec 22: A roadside bomb killed two US soldiers in Baghdad on Monday, hours after troops captured a former general in Saddam Hussein’s security services on charges of recruiting ex-soldiers to attack Americans.

The blast that ripped through a military convoy in the morning also killed an Iraqi interpreter and wounded two other soldiers, the US military said in a statement.

The military deaths, the first in five days, brought to 202 the number of US soldiers killed by hostile fire since the United States declared major combat over in Iraq on May 1.

Working on what Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers said on Sunday was information gleaned when Saddam Hussein was captured on Dec 13, troops have rounded up hundreds of people in towns north and west of Baghdad.

The area has been the scene of the fiercest armed resistance to US occupation and a bedrock of Saddam loyalists.—Reuters