Two American soldiers shot dead by uniformed Iraqi: US

Monday, May 4, 2009 at 6:04 AM Posted by Beijing News


Two American soldiers were shot dead and three more were wounded on Saturday when an Iraqi wearing army uniform opened fire on them south of the northern town of Mosul, the US military said.

"According to initial reports, an individual dressed in an Iraqi army uniform fired on the Coalition forces and was killed in the incident" around 20 kilometres 12 miles south of Mosul, the statement said.

It called the incident "a small arms fire attack at a combat outpost."

A Mosul police officer identified the assailant as Hassan al-Dulaimi, a soldier who also served as the imam of a mosque at an Iraqi army training centre south of the city, the capital of Nineveh province.

The latest deaths bring to 4,283 the number of American losses since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to an AFP count based on the independent website .

In February an American soldier was killed and three others wounded when two Iraqi policemen shot at them at a Mosul police station in an attack that also killed an Iraqi translator and wounded another.

A similar attack took place in the same city in November, when an Iraqi soldier shot dead two US soldiers before he was killed by their comrades.

Mosul, Iraq's second largest city with a mixed population of Kurds, Sunnis and Christians, has remained in the grip of insurgent violence even as unrest has subsided elsewhere over the past two years.

US troops could stay in Mosul beyond a June 30 deadline for withdrawing from Iraqi cities if Baghdad requests it, according to a Status of Forces Agreement SOFA concluded between the two states in November.

The American military regards Mosul as the last bastion of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, following its rout from Baghdad and western Iraq in 2007, and the city still sees regular attacks despite several major US and Iraqi operations.

The US military has insisted that Iraqi security forces will be able to take greater responsibility for security in the country in the coming months despite a recent streak of attacks in Baghdad that made April the bloodiest month of the year, with 355 people killed.

"We really look at trends, we don't look at single events, because whatever we do for a strategy is a months-long strategy," Major General David Perkins told reporters in Baghdad on Friday.

He admitted, however, that US commanders were negotiating with their Iraqi counterparts over Mosul and that the question of whether US troops would remain there past the June 30 deadline was "undecided."







South Korean dancers perform a traditional dance during a memorial service in Seoul. AFP/Kim Jae-Hwan

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