US Soldiers Wounded in Mosul Fighting

12/12/2004| IslamWeb

A US aircraft has dropped a quarter-tonne bomb on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, resulting in an "unknown number of enemy casualties" and injuring eight American soldiers. A military spokesman said the action on Saturday came after fighters opposed to the US-back government attacked a US military patrol that was trying to seize an arms dump. The fighters had set off a car bomb and then opened fire with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on the unit that moved on the arms cache. Troops later destroyed the weapons. There was an "unknown number of enemy casualties" and eight soldiers were slightly wounded, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Hastings said. Earlier in the day, another car bomb exploded near a US military convoy, wounding at least two passersby, witnesses and the US army said. **Senior officers killed*** In other attacks across the country three high-ranking Iraqi police officers and seven Iraqi national guardsmen were among those killed. The guardsmen were shot dead in the town of Hiyt in western Iraq when armed men ambushed their minibus, Captain Ahmad Jasim of the US-backed Iraqi force said. Three others were wounded. In southern Baghdad, guerrillas assassinated a police brigadier and a colonel, a police source said. Near the northern town of al-Sharqat, a police colonel was one of two officers killed in an ambush. Three others, including another colonel, were wounded. A police source said the brigadier and colonel killed in Baghdad worked at the interior ministry. In the centre of the northern oil capital of Kirkuk, a car bomb exploded, badly damaging a US Humvee patrol vehicle and wounding two soldiers and an interpreter, the US military said, adding that the wounded were in a stable condition. Security officials and civil servants have become prime targets for fighters opposed to the US military presence and to Iraqis working for the US-backed authorities. There are fears violence may increase before elections scheduled for 30 January. **Kirkuk*** In what will be a worrying sign for the interim government eager to pacify the country before the polls, election infrastructure is already coming under attack. A bomb damaged an office for election workers in the town of Zab, southwest of Kirkuk, wounding a civilian, police said. In other violence, four employees of the education ministry were wounded when the bus taking them to work in Baghdad was sprayed with gunfire. A civilian motorist was wounded on the main highway between Hilla and Karbala, south of the capital, when a roadside bomb went off, missing a convoy of guardsmen, police said. **PHOTO CAPTION*** A masked Iraqi man holds up his rifle as he celebrates near a burning National Guard vehicle following an attack in the northern city of Mosul, December 9, 2004. (REUTERS)