Two US troops killed in Iraq ambushes

Two Americans soldiers died in separate attacks in Iraq yesterday, the US military has confirmed.

A soldier from the 3rd Corps Support Command, operating out of Kuwait, was killed when his heavy transport hauler was attacked with small-arms fire southeast of the town of Ad Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad.

The vehicle struck another when it came under fire, officials said. Another soldier was also injured in the incident. He has been treated and returned to duty.

In a separate incident in Tikrit, an American civilian contract employee working as an interpreter died and two American soldiers were injured when they were fired on with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, according to US officials.

The two wounded soldiers, whose units and condition have not yet been released, were taken to the Army's 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad for treatment.

Two days before those incidents, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a US radio station that attacks on US forces were coming from "a mixture the remnants of the Fedayeen loyalists and other Saddam Hussein supporters". He also said that some attackers could be coming from the estimated 80,000 to 100,000 criminals released from prisons during the war with Iraq.

"They're out there and we know that some of the damage that's being done are by those types of people – criminals, looters and the like," he said.

"We also know that there are jihadists who came in from Syria for the most part, but also from some other countries that are in the country and are attacking the coalition and the Iraqi infrastructure. So you have a mixture of these different things, it makes it difficult to define them and to be precise about it."

The Defense Secretary said that the attacks make it difficult to defend against "any person who wants to attack at any time, at any place, using any technique".

(gmcg)