Children killed by roadside bombs in Iraq

Roadside bombs killed two US soldiers and two Iraqi children, as the toll from a coordinated guerrilla onslaught on Iraq’s holy Shiite city of Karbala rose to 19 dead.

Even as hundreds of weeping and wailing mourners buried victims of the rebel attack – the biggest since the December 13 capture of Saddam Hussein – six of those wounded died from their injuries.

In central Baghdad, a bomb planted beside a road killed two Iraqi children and an American soldier and wounded 14 people yesterday morning, said US Army Sgt. Patrick Compton of the Army’s 1st Armoured Division.

The wounded included five American soldiers, their Iraqi interpreter and eight members of the Iraqi civil defence corps.

Attackers detonated another roadside bomb later yesterday as a US convoy was travelling on a road near Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killing another American soldier and wounding three, the US military said.

The latest deaths bring the number of American combat deaths since the invasion in March to 325.

Also yesterday, officials said they arrested five Iraqi suspects in the Karbala attacks.

“We are holding five men, and we are still investigating them,” said Lieutenant Rafal Smilkowski of the Polish regiment that commands a multinational force controlling south-central Iraq.

Bulgaria declared tomorrow as an official day of mourning for six Bulgarian and two Thai soldiers killed in the attacks, which destroyed the Bulgarians headquarters in Iraq and appeared designed to undermine the resolve of US allies soldiering in Iraq.

Instead, Thailand announced it will send an additional 30 troops to provide security for the country’s noncombat troops.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thailand would fulfil its one-year commitment to the United States, a longtime ally, and would “not run away from a friend”.

Overnight, US forces dug up about 580 rockets buried under dirt near Abayachi, a village northwest of Baghdad, said Major Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the Army’s 4th Infantry Division.