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Three US Soldiers Killed in Iraq: Military    [

    US Strike Kills 8 Kurd Soldiers in Iraq
    By Ibon Villelabeitia
    Reuters

    Friday 09 February 2007

    Baghdad - A U.S. air strike killed eight Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers and wounded six others in northern Iraq on Friday in what appeared to be a "friendly fire" incident, Kurdish officials said.

    The U.S. military said American forces hunting suspected al Qaeda militants killed five armed men during a raid in the northern city of Mosul after American ground forces received small-arms fire from a bunker near the targeted building.

    The men, who had ignored warnings in Arabic and Kurdish to put down their weapons, turned out to be Kurdish policemen, the military said in a statement, adding that U.S. forces expressed their "deepest sympathies" to the families of the victims.

    Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who is also a close U.S. ally, has asked the Americans for more information on the incident, which comes as Kurdish soldiers prepare to deploy in Baghdad as part of a U.S.-backed plan to secure the capital.

    U.S. and Kurdish forces enjoy close ties. American and Kurdish troops fought alongside each other in northern Iraq during the opening stages of the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

    Kabir Goran, deputy head of the local Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Talabani's party, said U.S. helicopters struck a Peshmerga watchtower in eastern Mosul. He said the soldiers, who keep security for a nearby PUK office, had occupied the building for three years.

    He denied the soldiers had received any warning from the Americans and that they had opened fire.

    "We think they may have hit us by mistake," he told Reuters.

    Mosul lies just outside the autonomous region of Kurdistan and Kurdish forces have a presence in parts of the city.

    A spokesman for Talabani said he wanted an explanation.

    "Talabani is concerned about what happened. We were told it was a mistake," the spokesman said.

    Many Peshmerga - "those who are ready to die" in Kurdish - were incorporated into the Iraqi military after the U.S.-led invasion but others still operate as a separate force.

    Kurdish Soldiers in Baghdad

    As part of the Baghdad security plan, seen as the last-ditch effort to avert an all-out civil war, 4,000 Kurdish soldiers will be deployed in the capital's lawless streets to take part in their first major operation under Iraq's new army.

    U.S. and Iraqi forces on Thursday seized Deputy Health Minister Hakim Zamili, a member of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political group, on suspicion of funnelling millions of dollars to Shi'ite militias in the first major sign that the crackdown in Baghdad has begun.

    Officials from Sadr's movement said on Friday the arrest would not draw the group into a confrontation with U.S. troops.

    U.S. President George W. Bush has said he will send an additional 21,500 American troops to Iraq, most of them to Baghdad, to stem soaring violence between politically dominant Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

    General David Petraeus, the new top U.S. military commander in Iraq, is due to take formal command on Saturday of some 130,000 U.S. troops, replacing General George Casey.

    In further violence, the U.S. military said on Friday it had killed eight insurgents in an air strike that destroyed a building in Arab Jbour area near Baghdad after its ground forces came under heavy fire and had to call in air support.

    The U.S. military also announced the deaths of three U.S. soldiers killed in combat in western Anbar province.

    A British soldier was killed and three were wounded by a roadside bomb in Basra in southern Iraq, the Ministry of Defence said in London.

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    Three US Soldiers Killed in Iraq: Military
    Reuters

    Friday 09 February 2007

    Baghdad - Three U.S. soldiers died on Thursday of wounds sustained in combat in the western Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Friday.

    "Three soldiers assigned to Multi-National Force-West were killed Thursday from wounds sustained while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province," it said in a statement.

    The deaths bring to at least 14 the number of U.S. servicemen killed in Iraq in the past three days.

    Anbar province, a Sunni Arab insurgency stronghold, is the deadliest place for U.S. troops in Iraq.