Bombs kill four US soldiers in Baghdad

Bombs in Baghdad killed four US soldiers, the army said yesterday, bringing to nine the number of troops killed in Iraq in the last four days by explosives planted by guerillas to target American patrols.

A military spokesman said a roadside bomb blast in southern Baghdad around 10.45 p.m. (1945 GMT) on Saturday killed three US soldiers and wounded one.

Another bomb attack at 6.30 a.m. yesterday wounded an American soldier who later died in hospital, the spokesman said.

On Saturday, a bomb was detonated as a US patrol passed in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Guerillas then opened fire. Two soldiers were killed and several wounded.

Two bombings on Wednesday and Thursday in the restive "Sunni triangle" around Baghdad killed three soldiers.

Since the start of the war to oust Saddam, 389 US troops have been killed in action in Iraq - 274 of them since Washington declared major combat over on May 1 last year.

Six members of an Iraqi family were killed and four other children wounded, relatives said, when US soldiers who heard people shooting into the air on Saturday to celebrate a wedding nearby had fired back from their tanks.

The US military said it had no information about any incident at Zuham village near Miqdadiya, north of Baghdad.

Yesterday, US officials defended their decision to attack Iraq, saying Saddam posed a major threat. Critics say Washington exaggerated the case for war, pointing out that weapons of mass destruction it said Saddam stockpiled have not been found.

"It was the right thing to do and I'm glad it's done," Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, said on US television.

Most of the US deaths in recent months have been caused by roadside bombs, which the US Army calls "improvised explosive devices". The low-tech bombs, often made from artillery shells crudely wired to a detonator, have taken a deadly toll.

The US military says most insurgents fighting occupying forces are still Iraqi, but that foreign militants are playing an increasing role in planning and executing major attacks.

Last Tuesday, two US civilians seconded from the Department of Defence and their Iraqi translator were shot dead in an ambush on a road south of Baghdad. They were the first American employees of the US-led civilian administration to be killed in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.

A senior coalition official said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had assigned a team to investigate the killings of the two, named as Fern Holland, 33, a lawyer, and Robert Zangas, 44, a press officer.

The US military said six people had been detained in connection with the incident and that four of them were believed to be legitimate members of the Iraqi police force.

US forces have been hiring and training Iraqis for the police for several months in the hope they will eventually be able to take over responsibility for security.