A roadside bomb blast Tuesday killed one US soldier and injured another near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the military said.
The soldiers, members of Task Force Liberty, were on patrol when they were attacked at about 7am [local time], some 18 miles south of Tikrit.
The dead soldier’s name was being withheld pending next-of-kin notification, while the injured soldier returned to duty.
Elsewhere, fighters on Tuesday killed four Iraqi soldiers in the course of clashes outside a power plant in Mussayib, Reuters cited army sources as saying.
Also on Tuesday, U.S. troops and Iraqi fighters clashed in Mosul, with heavy exchanges of machine gun fire being heard.
American troops were seen advancing into the eastern neighborhood of Dhubbat, a known "insurgent stronghold" in Mosul, located 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, according to an AP report. American helicopters were also seen circling overhead.
It was unclear what sparked the clashes or if there were any casualties. A statement released by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul said troops had detained nine suspected "terrorists" in separate operations conducted Monday and Tuesday.
The statement said the operations took place in central and western Mosul and provided no further details. It was not immediately clear if the operations were related to the ongoing clashes in Dhubbat.
In the meantime, a Muslim cleric was killed on Tuesday while two other missing clerics were found shot dead, police said.
Muslim cleric Sheik Mouwaffaq al-Husseini was shot in a drive-by shooting by unknown gunmen while driving in Baghdad's western Jihad neighborhood, police Capt. Taleb Thamer said on the scene.
Two other Muslim clerics were found shot dead after being kidnapped by men Sunday from different mosques in Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Shaab by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms, a senior police official said.
Sheikh Hamed al-Khazraji, a spokesman from the Association of Muslim Scholars, identified the two other slain clerics as Sheik Hassan al-Naimi and Sheik Talal Nayef and confirmed the circumstances of their kidnappings.
Al-Naimi's body was found Tuesday and Nayef's on Monday, police and al-Khazraji said.
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
