Blasts kill 2 U.S. soldiers in Iraq
4 other soldiers are wounded in 2 roadside bombings over the weekend. The deaths, announced on Memorial Day, raise U.S. military fatalities in Iraq to at least 4,082 since the war began.
BAGHDAD — Two U.S. soldiers were killed in a pair of roadside bombings over the weekend, the U.S. military announced today.
One soldier died in a bomb blast Sunday night in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, which left two other soldiers wounded, the military said. No further information was immediately provided.
The province has a predominantly Sunni Arab population. Many Sunnis who fought Americans in the past have formed an alliance with the U.S. military in the last year, but other Sunni fighters, often affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq, have continued to fight U.S. forces.
The second bombing occurred Sunday afternoon in Qadisiya province in southern Iraq. One soldier was killed and two others wounded when the blast ripped into a patrol just west of the province's capital, Diwaniya , the military said.
Southern Iraq is largely populated by the country's Shiite Muslim majority. The sect includes some militants who have attacked U.S. forces in hopes of driving the Americans out of Iraq.
The deaths, announced on Memorial Day, raised the U.S. military's fatalities in Iraq to at least 4,082 since March 2003, when American-led forces invaded the country, according to icasualties.org, an independent website that tracks military casualties.
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle in Tarmiya, about 30 miles north of Baghdad, tried today to blow up the house of a Sunni tribal leader, Sheik Said Jassim, whose son heads a Sunni paramilitary unit that fights alongside the Americans. Two policemen, a member of the unit and a civilian were killed when the bomber detonated his explosives at the last checkpoint about 60 yards from the sheik's house, said a Sunni member of the paramilitary group.
In northern Iraq, an Interior Ministry official said police found six teenagers and a number of explosive vests in a house in Mosul. The boys told the police that they had been kidnapped by armed men who threatened to rape them or kill their families unless they carried out suicide bombings and other attacks, the official said. There was no confirmation of the allegations from the American military.
The Iraqi military has conducted operations to round up suspected Sunni militants this month in Mosul, which the U.S. military considers Al Qaeda in Iraq's last urban stronghold in the country.
Militants have previously deployed women and teenagers to carry out suicide attacks.
ned.parker@latimes.com
Times staff writers Saif Rasheed and Usama Redha contributed to this report.
