Six British soldiers were killed and eight others were injured in two separate attacks in southern Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said Tuesday. Both incidents, one involving a British helicopter, occurred within a few kilometers of each other in Amarah, north of the city of Basra, Blair's office said.
In one incident, eight British servicemen have been hurt in an machine gun attack north of Basra, the British Ministry of Defense said. Sources said three soldiers have been hurt seriously, in what is thought to be an ambush on a helicopter near the town of al-Amarah. "Our troops came under fire and there were several casualties but we have no confirmation of numbers or further details," a British spokesman said.
Meanwhile, five Iraqis were killed and two US soldiers wounded in three attacks on US forces Tuesday in the Ramadi region west of Baghdad and in Fallujah, reports said.
Two attacks targeted US roadblocks in the town of Ramadi at midnight Monday and 4:30 am, according to US Army Sergeant Keith O'Donnel.
During the first attack, a car charged at a patrol and refused to stop when ordered to by US troops, who opened fire, killing one person and injuring another.
In the second attack, a first car charged soldiers and its passengers opened fire. US troops retaliated, killing the driver. According to AFP, A second car then drove at full speed towards the soldiers, and there was also fire from neighbouring buildings. This left two Iraqis dead and two US soldiers injure.
Elsewhere, unknown assailants launched rocket-propelled grenades early Tuesday at US troops guarding a power station in the town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, AFP reported.
One Iraqi man was killed by US tank fire during subsequent searches.
The attack occurred at 1:15 am at a power distribution station, when an unknown number of men fired two rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) at the US troops guarding the facility, the report said.
US troops immediately fanned out around the al-Dubat neighbourhood, with tanks and infantry opening fire. One man, identified as Feras Fawzi al-Saab, 30, was standing at the gate of his house when he was shot dead, the report added. The man was decapitated by the shots.
US soldiers guarded the corpse, refusing to allow residents to remove it, it added.
The latest attacks came after Iraqi oil ministry officials said Monday a fuel pipeline near the Syrian border had been sabotaged in the third attack on Iraq's energy infrastructure in 10 days.
The United States also suffered a verbal assault Monday from chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, who told the Council for Foreign Relations in New York that Washington had jumped to conclusions about Iraqi weapons on the basis of "shaky" evidence.
"I don't exclude that the US inspectors ... may find something. It is possible," Blix said.
"But it is somewhat puzzling, I think, that you can have 100 percent certainty about the weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty about where they are," he said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
