Two US soldiers killed in Iraq as violence escalates

IRAQ’S cascade of violence has claimed more American lives, with a bomb attack on a military convoy killing one US soldier yesterday and gunmen slaying another in an ambush on a patrol in the capital.

Three American soldiers have been killed in attacks in Baghdad in a 24-hour period.

Early yesterday, insurgents threw a homemade bomb at a US convoy in northern Baghdad, killing a soldier, said Sgt Patrick Compton, a spokesman for the military. The night before, two gunmen ambushed a platoon in the Adhamiyah neighbourhood of northern Baghdad, and in the firefight that followed an American was killed, a military statement said.

Earlier on Sunday, a US soldier was shot in the head at close range as he waited to buy a soft drink at Baghdad University.

With ambushes, shootings and bombings taking place daily blamed on Saddam Hussein loyalists and other disgruntled Iraqis 30 American soldiers have been killed by hostile action since President George W Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

Despite increasing attacks against Americans, no extra troops are needed there now, war commander General Tommy Franks said yesterday.

It's not time to send in additional troops. We want...to continue to move forward with establishing security by working with the Iraqis," he said.

In northern Iraq, US forces on Sunday released 11 Turkish special forces detained last week, the Turkish military said, ending a diplomatic standoff between the two NATO allies.

In Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade on a US convoy late on Sunday, wounding four American soldiers, the military said. One Iraqi suspect was killed and another wounded.

Tension has increased in the town since a bomb blast on Saturday killed seven Iraqi police recruits as they graduated from a US-taught training course. Dozens more were injured.

The US military blamed the attack on pro-Saddam Hussein insurgents seeking to target those working with the Americans, but many in Ramadi said they thought the Americans themselves were behind the incident.

Ramadi was a stronghold of support for Saddam, and has been the site of frequent attacks that have killed Americans as well as Iraqis.

The killing of the US soldier waiting to buy a soft drink Sunday was similar to the slaying of a young British freelance cameraman, who was shot in the head outside a Baghdad museum on Saturday.

The death of the cameraman and a grenade attack on a UN compound raised concern that Iraq's worsening insurgency until now targeting only coalition troops and Iraqis accused of US collaboration will spread to Westerners in general.