4 soldiers are killed by roadside explosions
US strike killed 4 in family, Iraq says
BAGHDAD - Four US soldiers died in roadside bombings Tuesday and yesterday, the US military said, bringing to 10 the number of Americans killed in Iraq since Monday.
Three US soldiers and an interpreter were killed in a roadside bombing late Tuesday night in Nineveh Province, a military statement said. In recent weeks US and Iraqi forces have stepped up operations against area insurgents.
An American soldier was killed in eastern Baghdad yesterday morning by an armor-piercing roadside bomb, the US military said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said that a US air strike killed four members of a family north of Baghdad shortly after midnight yesterday.
Iraqi and US officials provided conflicting accounts of the event. Captain Ahmed al-Azwawi, a police official in Samra, a village about seven miles south of Tikrit, said US troops were in the area when a man fired shots in the air. Azwawi said the man, who sold propane gas for a living, thought thieves were in the vicinity. US soldiers then called in an air strike, Azwawi said, killing the man, his wife, and two of their children.
The US military said that soldiers carried out the air strike after ground troops were shot at during an operation targeting Al Qaeda in Iraq.
An armed man was seen walking toward a group of buildings, the military said. They cordoned off the area and asked him to come out, the statement said. When he refused to comply, the military said, soldiers "perceived hostile intent from the armed man and called for supporting aircraft to engage the building."
The man, described as a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed, the military said. The statement did not address the reported deaths of the woman and children but said four women inside the building sustained minor injuries.
Later yesterday morning, US troops in Baghdad killed three men who shot at them near Baghdad Airport, the military said. The soldiers were in a parked armored car when men in a moving vehicle shot at them. US soldiers returned fire, the military said. The car slammed into a wall and burst into flames, the military said, killing its three occupants.
