Three US soldiers were killed and six injured in Iraq as US-led forces step up patrols in an attempt to bring order to the country, Central Command announced Sunday.
A US soldier from the Fourth Infantry Division died early Sunday in Iraq "as a result of a non-hostile gunshot," the command said in a statement from Doha, giving no further details.
And a US Marine died and another was injured when the large transport vehicle they were in rolled over southeast of the town of Al-Samawah. The injured Marine is expected to recover, officials said.
One soldier was killed and three injured as they detonated unexploded ammunition Saturday in Baghdad, while two soldiers were injured separately when assailants attacked their transport truck, Central Command said.
The soldiers destroying the ammunition, belonging to the US Army V Corps, were rushed to a field hospital for medical attention after the Saturday accident.
Also Saturday two US soldiers were injured when assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their transport truck near the town of Habbaniyah.
In a separate Saturday incident, assailants also armed with a rocket-propelled grenade destroyed an army tanker truck at a Baghdad fuel depot. Marines detained four Iraqis for questioning, the statement added.
Last Tuesday two US Marines were killed when unexploded ordnance they were handling detonated.
In Washington, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss tried to make sense of the chaos in Iraq.
"These people have lived under an iron-fisted ruler in Saddam Hussein. They have not been allowed any freedoms whatsoever," Chambliss said on NBC's Meet the Press program.
"And all of a sudden now, they are free and they're very emotional, and they're doing things that are probably not characteristic of the Iraqi people," he said.
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