Monday, June 06, 2011

Five US Soldiers Killed In Central Iraq Attack

latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-web-5-soldiers-killed,0,5055923.story

Five soldiers killed in an attack in central Iraq, U.S. military says

By Ned Parker
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
4:23 AM PDT, June 6, 2011
From Baghdad

Five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in an attack in central Iraq, the U.S. military said in a statement. It was the deadliest single attack this year against U.S. forces, and an indication of how dangerous the country remains for American troops as they prepare to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

The deaths raise the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since March 2003 to 4,456, according to numbers complied by the website icasulaties.org. Both Shiite and Sunni extremist groups are eager to target the Americans and claim they defeated the U.S. troops ahead of their departure.

Eleven U.S. soldiers were killed in April, and two died last month in attacks.

There are an estimated 46,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a car bomb exploded by a checkpoint in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, at a governmental compound, where Iraqi soldiers were gathered. At least 14 people were killed and another 26 wounded.

Among the dead were a brigadier general and nine other soldiers and officers. The same area had been targeted on Friday by bombings that had left 23 dead.

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