Bomb kills soldier, bringing US death toll in Iraq to 500

A ROADSIDE bomb explosion yesterday killed one US soldier and wounded two, bringing the American death toll to nearly 500 since the start of fighting in March.

The soldier was the first reported combat death among US troops in Iraq since Friday, when nine soldiers were killed after a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down near Fallujah.

Earlier yesterday, the US military said that soldiers uncovered a “large weapons cache” on Friday in Ramadi, a town west of Baghdad.

An Iraqi led the troops to a house, where they found dozens of rocket-propelled grenades and a handful of launchers, nearly 220lbs of explosives, 16 remote controlled homemade bombs and two surface-to-air missiles, the military said in a statement.

Also acting on an Iraqi tip, US soldiers shot dead seven members of an armed gang allegedly trying to steal oil from a pipeline south of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, the Army said yesterday.

Iraq’s fuel lines have been targeted regularly by anti-American insurgents and others wanting to steal the vital reserves or sabotage the pipes.

Also yesterday, in a full-page newspaper advertisement, Iraq’s top Shiite Muslim cleric reiterated his demand for the country’s next legislature to be elected.

The ad in the Iraqi newspaper, al-Zaman, quoted Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani as telling a delegation of tribal leaders that power must rest with Iraqis and “not outsiders”, an apparent reference to the US-led occupation authorities.

Al-Sistani, whose views are highly influential among Iraq’s Shiite majority, said the current US plan to have regional caucuses select members of a provisional national assembly would give birth to an illegitimate Iraqi government. Al-Sistani also said only an elected legislature can ratify the presence of US-led coalition troops beyond July 1, a designated date for the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis.

Drafting a new plan to accommodate al-Sistani’s views would further anger Iraq’s minority Sunnis, who had dominated politics in Iraq for decades and are bristling at the attention given now to the Shiites they traditionally oppressed.