Iraqi police inspect the extent of the damage to the SCIRI office

HILLA, Iraq, March 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Two U.S. occupation employees and a soldier were killed Tuesday, March 9, in two separate attacks in Iraq, U.S. occupation officials announced Wednesday, March 10.

Two female Americans and their Iraqi interpreters were shot dead late Tuesday at a fake checkpoint on the road between Karbala and Hilla, south of Baghdad, as Iraqi fighters disguised themselves as Iraqi police, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Polish military spokesman Zdzislaw Gnatowski said that the attackers had shot the three after holding them up at the false checkpoint near Hilla, in the heart of the Polish-controlled zone of the country.

“The Polish soldiers arrested five men and have handed them over to the American police,” he said.

He said that the suspects were to be transported to a prison in Baghdad and questioned by U.S. troops because the victims were of U.S. nationality.

Poland heads a multinational force of 9,000 troops patrolling southern and central Iraq, with their headquarters in Hilla.

U.S. Soldier Killed

Also on Tuesday, a freshly-arrived U.S. soldier was killed in a bomb attack north of Baghdad.

A roadside bomb claimed the life of a soldier from the 1st Infantry Division (1ID) and wounded a colleague traveling in a vehicle convoy near Baquba, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Baghdad, a U.S. occupation official said.

The wounded man, from the departing 4th Infantry Division, was in stable condition.

It was the first combat death for the 1ID in Iraq, still in the course of arriving in Iraq as part of the greatest U.S. troops rotation since World War II.

Added to an official Pentagon tally, the death raises to 265 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in resistance operations since U.S. President George W. Bush declared the war to occupy Iraq over on May 1.

Iraqi Police Take Fire

Iraqi police also took more deaths Tuesday with four killed in a midnight firefight in the town of An-Nassiriya, Reuters news agency quoted a U.S. occupation official as saying Wednesday.

One Italian solider and two Iraqi policemen were wounded in the incident in the southern town about 235 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The shootout in front of the offices of an authorized security organization, the Citizens Security Group (CSG), which protects political parties, began at around 10:30 p.m. Iraq local time, Reuters said. 

Italian military spokesman Andrea Angeli said Italian forces based nearby responded and were caught up in the firefight.

“The situation was brought under control at around 1:00 a.m. when Carabinieri special paratroopers stormed the CSG building, rescued the two alleged hostages and arrested eight members of the CSG,” Reuters quoted Angeli as saying. 

Italy has sent around 3,000 troops to Iraq as part of the around 150,000-strong U.S.-led occupation force.

Iraqi Civilian Killed

Meanwhile in northern Iraq, an off-target U.S. mortar round killed one Iraqi civilian and wounded another when it struck a building in the village of Ejba, the U.S. occupation revealed Wednesday.

“A mortar round from 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, accidentally struck a building in the southeast side of Ejba, killing one citizen and injuring another Monday (March 8),” occupation Taskforce Olympia, charged with the northern provinces of Nineveh, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, said in a statement.

“The coalition unit was conducting a mission against hostile forces in the area when one round fell short of its intended target. Soldiers were immediately dispatched to the scene”.

The soldiers transported the casualties to a medical hospital for treatment and the incident is under investigation, the occupation said.

SCIRI Attacked

In other developments, a bomb exploded early Tuesday, March 9, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Baghdad, near the Baquba office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the main Shiite parties.

“Around 6:00 am (0300 GMT), a bomb exploded and left four people wounded, including the four year-old son of one of the security guards,” said Faraj Hatem, a SCIRI official.

“The wounds were not serious, but the building was badly damaged,” she said.

Furthermore, a grenade was lobbed at the local governing council building in Mosul.

The attacker spotted a U.S. soldier inside the building in the Bab al-Tub neighborhood in central Mosul and hurled the grenade, wounding two policemen, three government employees and two civilians, said police spokesman Azem Haffuzi.