The US Central Command reported Tuesday night that assailants armed with rocket-propelled grenades had killed an American soldier and critically injured another in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The attack was blamed on remnants of Iraq’s ousted Baath party regime.
This latest attack against soldiers collecting arms at a checkpoint, took the number of US personnel killed since April 9, when Baghdad fell to the Americans, to at least 40. The soldier from the US 82nd Airborne Division was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a weapons collection point in Baghdad, the US Central Command said in a statement.
The other soldier was wounded when two men jumped out of a van and fired two rocket-propelled grenades, the statement said.
"The soldiers were evacuated to a field medical facility for treatment, and one soldier later died of his injuries. The injured soldier is listed in critical condition," the statement said.
Meanwhile, the leader of an Iraqi exile group said the former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, has been seen north of Baghdad and is paying a bounty for every American soldier killed. Saddam is bent on revenge and believes he can "sit it out and get the Americans going," said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress.
The ousted Iraqi leader has been sighted on several recent occasions moving in an arc from Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, around the Tigris River toward his home town of Tikrit and into the Dulaimi areas to the west of the Tigris, Chalabi said, according to AP. (Albawaba.com)
