US soldier kills five colleagues in base rampage

Five US troops were shot dead by a fellow soldier who ran amok at a base in Iraq today.

The killer was captured almost immediately.

The shootings follow several incidents recently when gunmen dressed as Iraqi soldiers have fired on American troops, including an attack in the northern city of Mosul on May 2 when two soldiers and the gunman were killed.

The toll from today’s shooting was the highest for US personnel in a single attack since April 10, when a suicide truck driver killed five American soldiers near a police headquarters in Mosul.

Attacks on officers by their own troops, known as fraggings, were not uncommon during the Vietnam war as morale in the ranks sank.

But the only other member of the US military convicted of murdering a superior since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began is Army Sergeant Hasan Akbar of the 101st Airborne Division. Akbar was sentenced to death for a 2003 grenade-and-rifle attack at a base in Kuwait before his unit’s move into in Iraq.

Meanwhile today a senior Iraqi traffic officer was assassinated on his way to work in Baghdad. It was the second attack on a high-ranking traffic police officer in the capital in as many days.

A car cut off General Abdul-Hussein al-Kadhoumi as he drove through a central square in the capital and a second vehicle pulled up alongside and riddled him with bullets. Al-Kadhoumi was director of operations for the traffic authority.