The Tikrit attacks took place hours after insurgents in central Iraq ambushed two US military convoys with remote-controlled bombs and opened fire on one of them. Two US soldiers were wounded in the three-hour gunbattle in the town of Khaldiyah, 80km west of Baghdad, the military said.
Shortly afterward and a few kilometers to the west, a second roadside bomb hit a military convoy of three Humvees and a truck, according to witnesses. One Humvee was engulfed in flames.
An Italian Foreign Ministry official said in Rome that US soldiers in northern Iraq on Thursday fired into a car carrying the Italian official heading US efforts to recover looted antiquities, killing the man's Iraqi interpreter. The Italian, Pietro Cordone, was unhurt.
RSS