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US military deaths reach 2,000 in Iraq war
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-26 14:18 In the latest fighting, US and Iraqi troops raided insurgent safe houses
Tuesday northwest of Qaim, a tense town near the Syrian border along a major
infiltration route for foreign fighters. At one safe house, where women and
children were also staying, an exchange of fire detonated an insurgent's suicide
vest, causing the roof to collapse, a US statement said.
People protest the
war in Iraq on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005, on a downtown corner in Nashville,
Tenn. Demonstrators gathered during rush hour after news came out that the
U.S. death toll for the war has reached 2,000.
[AP] | "The women and children were rescued from the rubble and treated by medical
personnel," the statement added. US aircraft then destroyed three buildings
after the survivors were taken to a safe area, the statement said.
Elsewhere, suicide car bombs exploded Tuesday in the generally peaceful
Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, killing 12 people. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed
responsibility in an Internet statement.
The group also said it was behind the three suicide car bombs aimed at the
Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Baghdad. Deputy Interior Minister Maj. Gen.
Hussein Ali Kamal said 17 people were killed — mostly hotel guards and
passers-by — in Monday's attack, which involved bombers driving two cars and a
cement truck.
The US soldier who shot and killed the truck driver said he initially had a
hard time seeing the truck drive through the breach that the first car explosion
had created in the concrete wall.
"Once the dust and the debris settled down, I noticed the truck had already
breached through our perimeter," Spc. Darrell Green told CNN American Morning.
"He backed up and then pulled forward. As he was doing that, I engaged in
machine gun and took out the driver. If he had made it through, he could have
done a lot more damage, a lot more casualties than what actually happened."
In a Web posting, al-Qaida in Iraq said it carried out the hotel attack to
target a "dirty harbor of intelligence agents and private American, British and
Australian security companies." The hotel complex houses offices of the AP and
other media organizations.
Also Tuesday, insurgents killed six Iraqis — a 7-year-old boy, two Iraqi
soldiers and three policemen — and wounded 45 others in a series of attacks in
Baghdad.
A video posted on an Islamic extremist Web site showed a US soldier being
shot in Iraq while guarding an armored vehicle. The militant Islamic Army in
Iraq said one of its snipers killed the soldier in Baghdad on Monday, but the US
military said it could not verify the authenticity of the
claim.
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