TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) - Attackers ambushed a U.S. military patrol late Thursday, killing three American soldiers and wounding two on the outskirts of Saddam Hussein’s hometown.
Damn!
The assault near Tikrit came hours after insurgents ambushed two U.S. military convoys with remote-controlled bombs, opening a three-hour gunbattle in a volatile city 50 miles west of Baghdad.
The U.S. military said two soldiers were wounded in the Khaldiyah ambush, the latest in a string of attacks that has raised questions about the Bush administration’s handling of post-war Iraq.
The three soldiers from the Army’s 4th Infantry Division were killed when attackers opened fire with small arms in the village of Uja, just five miles south of the center of Tikrit, shortly before midnight Thursday, Lt. Col. William McDonald said. Uja was Saddam’s birthplace. The two wounded soldiers were evacuated to a medical treatment facility and the names of those killed were withheld pending notification of next of kin, he said.
The soldiers were part of a patrol investigating a suspected site used to launch rocket propelled grenades, or RPG’s, at American military convoys. The weapons have been used to launch repeated attacks against the U.S. military in and around Tikrit. "They were responding to a suspected RPG site when the incident occurred," McDonald said.
He provided no further details and did not say if any Iraqis had been killed in the firefight.
I’m no military expert, but I really do think it’s time to lower the boom on Tikrit and surrounding environs. We need to teach the locals that you do NOT shoot at us and get away with it. |