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Us soldier killed in iraq attack Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?vts=080220031125http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?vts=080220031125
U.S. soldier killed in Iraq attack
Raids in Tikrit turn up three ‘associates’ of Saddam
MSNBC NEWS SERVICES
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 2 — A U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on their convoy east of Baghdad, the military reported Saturday.
THE SOLDIER, killed late Friday, was the 52nd to die in combat in Iraq since President Bush declared major fighting over on May 1. So far 167 soldiers have died in the Iraq War, 20 more than during the 1991 Gulf War.
The Arab satellite television broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported that one U.S. soldier also died Saturday morning in an attack north of the capital, but the military said it had no details on the incident.
The military also announced Saturday that U.S. soldiers, firing in self-defense, had killed a woman Friday who was standing near where attackers dropped an explosive from an overpass onto the U.S. convoy below.
THREE ‘IMPORTANT FIGURES HELD’
U.S. troops conducting raids Friday in Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, captured two men they said were important Saddam associates and a bodyguard suspected of planning attacks on U.S. forces. The military did not identify the captives but said their arrests could bring them a step closer to finding Saddam.
The military said 100 soldiers of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division swept into the two houses at 4 p.m. (8 a.m. ET) and caught the two associates of Saddam napping in the afternoon heat.
The bodyguard, a high-ranking Iraqi army officer described as a second-tier bodyguard in Saddam’s regime, gave himself up peacefully to dozens of soldiers while he visited a home in Tikrit. He was believed to have planned and supplied weapons for guerrilla attacks on U.S. soldiers and was suspected of providing security for fugitives on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis — possibly including Saddam, said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, commander of Army forces in Tikrit.
Russell described the three men as “important associates of the former regime” and said it was believed that “the information they may possess will further help destroy the regime.”
U.S. forces have given mixed assessments over the past two weeks of their search for Saddam, with some commanders saying they were on the verge of capturing him and others trying to lower expectations, saying he would be caught at some point.
Military sources farther north in the city of Mosul, meanwhile, said the Americans were focusing on a band of Iraq stretching from the Tigris River to the Syrian border between Tikrit and Mosul.
AL-QAIDA IN IRAQ?
Sanchez said the core of the resistance remained linked to Saddam. But asked whether Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network was also involved, he replied: “They probably are operating in Iraq.”
He said Ansar al Islam, which formerly had a base in the mountainous Kurdish-controlled zone of northern Iraq, and “other extremist groups” were active, too.
Still, “I think we all clearly understand that’s what this business is about here: to try to bring the political brutality of the Saddam Hussein regime back into power,” he said. “There’s no other political alternative that they’re espousing.”
Despite more than 280 raids across Iraq over the past week, Sanchez said he did not have “anything really significant to report” in the search for Saddam. “We remain focused on him, and we will find him at some point,” he said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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