Thousands hunt for missing soldiers
Thousands of US troops backed by helicopters searched for three American soldiers who went missing in an Al-Qaida stronghold near Baghdad after an ambush that killed five members of their patrol.
An Al-Qaida-led group, the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said in an Internet posting that it was holding "crusader" soldiers, a term used to describe US forces.
North of the capital, a truck bomb near the office of a leading Kurdish political party killed at least 50 and wounded 70 in the town of Makhmour, a local health official said, in the second attack against Kurdish areas in Iraq in four days.
The patrol of seven US soldiers and one Iraqi army interpreter was ambushed on Saturday in a rural area south of Baghdad known as the Sunni "Triangle of Death" the same area where two US soldiers were abducted by Al-Qaida insurgents last year before their mutilated bodies were found.
"We can establish now the identity of three of the American soldiers who were killed and the one Iraqi Army interpreter that was killed. So the identification of four of the five is now complete and the fifth one is still ongoing," Major-General William Caldwell, chief military spokesman, said.
"We will make every effort available to find our three missing soldiers," Caldwell told a news conference.
US-led troops backed by helicopters and jets combed orchards, searched farms and threw up roadblocks in a massive hunt for the missing soldiers west of the town of Mahmudiya.
Residents said the patrol was ambushed by insurgents after being struck by a roadside bomb on a rural road in an area of palm groves called Shibaiya, near the town of Yusufiya.
"We saw smoke rise from the area. Three vehicles were on fire and a fourth one had fallen into a canal," said a farmer.
"US forces cordoned off the area and made arrests," the farmer said as US helicopters hovered overhead.
The mayor of Mahmudiya, Muayed al-Ameri, also said the patrol had been ambushed.
Last June, Al-Qaida gunmen snatched two US soldiers at a checkpoint in Yusufiya. Their mutilated and booby-trapped bodies were found days later after a search by thousands of troops.
Some 30,000 additional US troops are being deployed in Baghdad in what is seen as a final push to halt a slide into all-out civil war between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs.
The three-month-old plan is also aimed at securing areas outside Baghdad from where Sunni Arab militants are staging attacks against Shi'ites in the capital and elsewhere.
Agencies
(China Daily 05/14/2007 page6)
