IRAQ: Nine US servicemen were killed in Iraq yesterday, six of them in a mortar attack on a military base in the west of the country, a US military spokesmen said.
The deaths took to 14 the number of US servicemen killed in Iraq in the first two days of May. In total, 552 soldiers have been killed in action since the US-led invasion.
A US military spokesman said the mortar attack was launched on a military base in western Iraq two hours drive from Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, but would give no further details.
Near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, one US soldier was killed and 10 were wounded when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb and fired assault rifles at a US base, a US military spokesman said.
Two US soldiers and two members of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps were killed early in the morning in north-west Baghdad.
Two more US soldiers were killed near Amara on Saturday when their convoy came under fire from small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade.
On Saturday, three British soldiers and an Iraqi policemen were wounded in a rare clash between British forces and the Mehdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Amara, 365 km south of Baghdad following a swoop. - (Reuters)