Roadside Bomb, Strike on Base Kill Three U.S. Soldiers in Iraq

BAGHDAD —  A mortar attack on a sprawling U.S. Army base in central Iraq and a roadside bomb on a dangerous thoroughfare outside the capital killed three American soldiers, the military said Saturday.

All three deaths occurred Friday -- the same day another U.S. soldier died when an American observation helicopter was downed by insurgents west of Baghdad -- but were not immediately disclosed by the Army.

Two of the soldiers were killed when an “improvised explosive device” detonated near their vehicle as their patrol passed by, a military spokeswoman said. The bomb was laid alongside a roadway just south of Baghdad, in the same general area that American forces had bombarded overnight.

A third soldier was reported wounded in the explosion. The names of the slain soldiers were not released Saturday.

Crude but powerful homemade bombs have become the preferred method for insurgents to hurt the vastly more powerful U.S. forces without engaging them directly. In recent months, roadside bombs have accounted for a large proportion of American military casualties.

U.S. troops have learned to be alert for explosives concealed in everything from concrete blocks to abandoned pipes to cardboard boxes, but it has proved impossible for patrols to spot every object that could represent a hazard.

The mortar attack, which left one soldier dead and two others wounded, occurred late Friday at one of the Americans’ largest bases in Iraq, near the town of Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Insurgents launch frequent nighttime mortar attacks on U.S. bases, particularly those to the north and west of the capital, but a fatal strike on the heavily fortified American encampments is rare. The attackers are generally unable to aim at any particular target within a base, and simply lob shells over the perimeter fences in hopes of scoring a hit.

The soldier died of shrapnel wounds from a mortar shell that struck troops’ living quarters, said a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, whose troops are deployed over a large swath of territory north of Baghdad. After the attack, troops rushed out to hunt for the assailants and arrested six people, spokesman Sgt. Robert Cargie said.

With the three latest deaths, the number of American soldiers killed in action since the start of the war in Iraq stands at 331.

Confronted with a stubborn insurgency that has persisted despite the capture last month of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, U.S. forces are fighting back with tactics that include wide-ranging raids, which have netted hundreds of suspected loyalists of the former government. Interrogation of these suspects in turn has led to the seizure of dozens of weapons caches.

Although U.S. commanders acknowledge that heavy weapons are not always effective against mobile and lightly armed insurgents, U.S. forces over the last two weeks have been carrying out an intermittent campaign of bombardment on the southern outskirts of the capital.

Heavy explosions, artillery and machine-gun fire echoed late into the night Friday, following a pattern similar to U.S. strikes waged during the last half of December. The military did not disclose the specific targets of the latest bombardment, but previously it has said the areas being hit were used by insurgents to launch rocket and mortar attacks.

The Sunni Muslim and tribal-dominated southern edge of Baghdad is considered a stronghold of the insurgency and is known to be the staging ground for a variety of hit-and-run-style attacks against American forces, U.S. commanders say.