Three American soldiers were killed Friday when a roadside bomb went off in Babil province, south of Baghdad.
American military officials were not disclosing much about the deadly incident. The soldiers were apparently in a Humvee patrolling near Mahaweel, a City, 35 miles south of Baghdad, when the bomb went off at approximately 11:30 AM local time. Two of the soldiers were killed instantly while the third died after being evacuated for medical treatment.
These three deaths raise the number of American troops killed in Iraq to at least 2,414 since the American-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.
Meanwhile, three insurgents were killed on Thursday in Samarra, the site of the shrine bombing that escalated the sectarian violence in Iraq in February that has helped put Iraq on the brink of civil war.
Three militants were detained by U.S. forces and three others were killed when they opened fire on American troops from a nearby building. According to a U.S. military spokesman, the Americans suffered no casualties in the incident.
Elsewhere in Iraq, the bodies of five Iraqis who apparently were kidnapped and killed also were found Friday. Four of the dead were found in Baghdad and one on the outskirts of the city, Iraqi police reported. Such sectarian killings by 'death squads' have become common in Iraq, especially in the capital.
