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November 23, 2003 

Three U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq  

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Two U.S. soldiers were shot in their car in
the northern Iraqi city of Mosul Sunday and their bodies mutilated and
looted by a crowd of Iraqis.

Another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad.

A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said two of its soldiers
were shot in the middle of the day in Mosul as they drove from one
base in the city to another.

Witnesses said that after the shooting the soldiers were stabbed and
their throats slit. A crowd looted the civilian car they were driving
and tried to set it ablaze.

One man brandished a fistful of bloodstained Iraqi dinars he said were
taken from the soldiers.

In Baghdad, U.S. army spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said he
would not discuss how the soldiers died.

A local fireman who ran to the scene after hearing gunfire said he saw
a crowd of Iraqis ransacking the car.

"People were taking things from the car. I looked inside and saw two
soldiers with blood all over them," he said.

U.S. troops quickly surrounded the area, in the crowded center of the
city, and interrogated bystanders.

"They hate the Americans in this area," said a man waiting for petrol
near the scene. "They've been doing many raids around here and so it's
not surprising they've been attacked."

In Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, a 4th Infantry Division
soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb was
detonated as their convoy drove past, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel
William MacDonald said.

SUICIDE BOMBS

The attacks came a day after suicide bombers detonated cars packed
with explosives outside Baquba's police headquarters and a police
station in the nearby town of Khan Bani Saad.

MacDonald said 17 Iraqis were killed in the bombings, one fewer than
initially thought.

Since Washington declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1, 185 U.S.
soldiers have been killed in action. Despite the steadily rising toll,
a senior U.S. general said during a visit to Saddam Hussein's hometown
of Tikrit that forces would stay until the job was done and Iraq was
stable.

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff,
also dismissed media reports that Washington planned to keep 100,000
troops in Iraq through 2006.

"To put a date on that would be wrong, to put a number on it would be
wrong," Pace said.

Mosul has seen an upsurge in violence in recent weeks. Guerrillas
brought down two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters over the city this month,
killing 17 American soldiers in the deadliest single strike on U.S.
forces since they invaded in March.

Saturday, a bomb in a cart loaded with oranges exploded in the city as
a convoy of three U.S. military vehicles was passing. The convoy was
unharmed but two Iraqis were killed.

Colonel Abdul Salam, a senior police officer in charge of protecting
Mosul's oil infrastructure, was shot and killed as he walked to a
mosque with his eight-year-old son Saturday evening, Iraqi police and
U.S. military officials said.

Southeast of Mosul, in the oil city of Kirkuk, explosions shook the
North Oil Company compound late Saturday, wounding four contractors
working for the American services firm Kellogg, Brown & Root, a U.S.
spokesman said.

Overnight, witnesses said U.S. fighter jets bombed areas around the
town of Samarra, north of Baghdad, as U.S. forces maintained an
offensive against guerrilla targets.

MISSILE HITS DHL PLANE

Civilian flights to Baghdad were suspended at the weekend after a DHL
cargo plane made an emergency landing Saturday following a direct hit
by a missile. Kimmitt said two surface-to-air missiles were believed
to have been fired at the plane, and one hit the left wing, setting an
engine ablaze.

It was the first time guerrillas had hit a fixed-wing plane with a
missile in Iraq, although helicopters have proved more vulnerable.
Over the last month, five have been brought down.

In Japan, Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Tokyo, one of
Washington's closest allies in Asia, should defy threats and stick to
its controversial plan to send troops to Iraq.

The comments followed media reports in Japan that al Qaeda had warned
it would infiltrate Tokyo and attack the capital as soon as Japanese
troops set foot in Iraq.

In a move to normalize post-war diplomatic ties, Iraq's Foreign
Ministry announced that Rend Rahim, an Iraqi-American woman, would
become Iraq's ambassador to the United States -- ending 13 years of
diplomatic freeze between the two countries.

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