5 soldiers from U.S. die in Iraq

AP | April 23 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Five U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday, including four whose vehicle hit a roadside bomb while patrolling south of Baghdad, the military said.


A fifth soldier died of injuries suffered in a roadside bomb attack south of Baghdad, the U.S. command said in a separate statement. It was unclear whether the soldier was fatally wounded in the same attack that killed the four others.

At least 2,388 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began, including 62 people with Indiana ties, according to an Associated Press count.
In another sign of the ongoing security crisis, U.S. and Iraqi forces fought an hourlong gunbattle with insurgents in Ramadi, a center of Iraq's Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency, and four militants were killed and two Iraqi soldiers wounded, U.S. officials said.

Also Saturday, suspected insurgents exploded two bombs in a market in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 17. The second blast was timed to hit emergency crews arriving at the scene.

The bullet-ridden bodies of 10 Iraqis were found in and around Baghdad, many blindfolded with hands and legs bound in rope. Some appeared to have been tortured, and one was decapitated, police said.

Police also found a body with signs of torture floating in the Tigris River in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.

In the capital, gunmen in a speeding car sprayed a police patrol with machine-gun fire, killing one officer. Gunmen killed a civilian riding in a car, and a roadside bomb wounded two policemen.

An Australian soldier shot himself in the head in a "tragic accident" inside Baghdad's Green Zone housing the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government buildings, Australian defense officials said Saturday.

He was the Australian military's first casualty since the Iraq war began in 2003. Last year, an Australian-British citizen serving in Britain's Royal Air Force was killed.

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