ugnet_: THREE AMERICAN SOLDIERS KILLED IN IRAQ

[Mulindwa Edward]

Three U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq Ambush 55 minutes ago By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three American soldiers were killed Thursday when their convoy was hit by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in northern Iraq (news - web sites), a military spokeswoman said.   The killings were further signs that an insurgency against American troops is not losing strength as Washington hoped after the deaths Tuesday of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s sons Odai and Qusai. V Corps spokeswoman Spc. Nicole Thompson said the soldiers, members of the 101st Airborne Division, were traveling in a convoy toward Qayyarah, 186 miles north of the capital, Baghdad, when they were at attacked around 2:30 a.m. No soldiers were reported wounded and it wasn't known if any attackers were killed or wounded. Thompson didn't know where they were traveling from. On Wednesday, two American soldiers were killed in separate attacks on their convoys, including one near the northern city of Mosul where Saddam's sons were killed in an intense firefight with members of the 101st Airborne Division. The American deaths Thursday brought to 158 the number of U.S. servicemen killed in action since the war began March 20, surpassing by 11 the death toll in the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites). Odai and Qusai were Nos. 2 and 3 on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted from the toppled Saddam regime. Guerrilla holdouts loyal to the regime have attacked U.S. forces at a rate of about 12 times daily in an effort to wear down the Americans and drive them from the country. To prove to Iraqis the brothers are dead, Defense Secretary H. Donald Rumsfeld said the United States would release photographs of their bodies, but didn't say when. The photos are likely to be gruesome because the fighting to capture the house was intense. In Sadr City, a poor suburb of Baghdad formerly called Saddam City, some residents wanted to be sure the brothers were dead. "We heard about Odai and Qusai being killed and, frankly, we are happy," Fadil Abbas told Associated Press Television News. "The question is, what's the proof of them being killed. We heard about it, but we haven't seen any proof so far." Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition troops in Iraq, said the brothers, along with two other Iraqis believed to be a bodyguard and Qusai's teenage son Mustafa barricaded themselves on the second floor of a three-story home in Mosul. He said they were killed after anti-tank rockets were fired from Humvees during the sporadic four-hour siege. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in London, Izzedin Kamel Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of the two brothers, said Odai and Qusai were likely relaxing in the Mosul home when the American soldiers approached it. "They went to this man in particular because he was a member of the family and they thought they could stay there for a while, be safe and then go somewhere else," he said. Also Wednesday, a tape purportedly made by Saddam called on Iraqis to press their uprising against the U.S.-led occupation. The tape reportedly was made Sunday, two days before the killing of Saddam's eldest sons. The CIA (news - web sites) was analyzing the audio message broadcast by Arab TV but has reached no conclusion about its authenticity, said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.             The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"             Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"