3 U.S. soldiers killed in rocket attack in Iraq
BAGHDAD — Three American soldiers were killed in a rocket attack today in southern Iraq, the U.S. military said.
In addition, two soldiers and one civilian were wounded when the rocket hit a military outpost outside of Nasiriya, the military said in a statement. It was not immediately clear who fired the rocket.
Nasiriya is the capital of Dhi Qar province. The city, like much of southern Iraq, has been troubled by periodic violence, some of it caused by competing Shiite Muslim militias.
The attack came a day after a bomb exploded by a civilian bus and a U.S. military convoy on the road between Basra and Nasiriya, killing as many as 16 Iraqi civilians, according to Iraqi police. The U.S. military said it had no record of any deaths in the Tuesday attack. It said that the blast had left only one U.S. soldier and one Iraqi wounded.
The U.S. military also announced today that a U.S. soldier had died of wounds from a bomb blast Tuesday near the southern city of Diwaniya. Two soldiers were injured in the attack.
U.S. and Iraqi forces in the city have been fighting militants with links to the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. Sadr recently called on his followers to abide by a cease-fire, first announced in August, for another six months. However, some groups with links to his movement continue to attack U.S. soldiers.
The latest fatalities raised to 3,987 the number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq since March 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.
