Violence claims two U.S. soldiers, four women

By The Associated Press

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In separate incidents, gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying Iraqi women who worked in the laundry at a U.S. military base, killing four of them, and the security chief of Spanish troops was wounded during a raid south of the capital.

Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division, said insurgents fired mortars and rockets at a U.S. military encampment outside Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, on Wednesday evening, killing the two soldiers and critically wounding a third.

The two deaths raised to 505 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the U.S.-led coalition launched the Iraq war March 20.

The attack on the laundry workers took place Wednesday in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, when nine women were being driven to work at the nearby U.S. military base in Habbaniyah, said Khajiq Serkis, the women's driver, who was shot in the leg.

All the dead women were Armenian or Assyrian Christians.

In the city of Diwaniya, 120 miles south of Baghdad, Spanish Civil Guard commander Gonzalo Perez Garcia was shot in the head yesterday after a pre-dawn raid with Iraqi police at the home of a suspected terrorist leader, according to a Spanish Defense Ministry statement in Madrid.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Edmund Sanders in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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