Three US soldiers killed and 13 injured in mortar attack

THREE American soldiers were killed and 13 injured in a mortar attack and a bombing in the volatile region of central Iraq, the US military reported yesterday.

The deaths followed an assassination attempt against a member of Iraq’s Governing Council.

Two US soldiers were killed when mortars hit a US base near the Abu Ghraib prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday night. Thirteen other soldiers were injured in the attack.

Shortly before the Abu Ghraib shelling, a soldier from the Armoured Cavalry Regiment was killed when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb near Ramadi, about 60 miles west of the capital, the military said.

The deaths brought to 165 the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since May 1 when President Bush declared major fighting was over.

The latest deaths brought to 303 the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq.

The latest American deaths followed an assassination attempt on Saturday against Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women on the 25-member Governing Council and strong candidate to become Iraq’s representative at the United Nations.

Al-Hashimi, a Shiite Muslim and career diplomat, was seriously wounded by six gunmen in a pickup truck who chased her in her car on Saturday. The assailants escaped.

Al-Hashimi underwent a second operation and was in stable condition at a military hospital on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces where the Coalition Provisional Authority has its headquarters, an official with the US-led civilian administration said yesterday.

She had been preparing to leave for a key UN General Assembly meeting in New York tomorrow. Major US allies are pressing for Washington to give the United Nations a greater role in bringing stability to this fractured country.

The Governing Council president, Ahmad Chalabi, blamed Saddam loyalists for the shooting.

US-led forces have been struggling to put down a guerrilla-style insurgency that has targeted Americans and their Iraqi allies. The police chief of the central town of Khaldiyah, who was working with US forces, was assassinated by gunmen last week, and other attacks have killed police recruits trained by the Americans.