Three U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq

By The Associated Press

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TIKRIT, Iraq — Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed in separate incidents in northern Iraq yesterday, officials said.

One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb about three miles south of Tikrit, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, spokesman for the Army's 1st Infantry Division.

The soldier was traveling in his vehicle on the main highway when he spotted a suspicious object at the side of the road near Uja, the village where Saddam Hussein was born and where members of his family and tribe still live, O'Brien said.

The object turned out to be a bomb, which detonated and killed the soldier, O'Brien said.

Another soldier died of his wounds following an attack on a patrol in the northern town of Mosul, about 125 miles north of Tikrit, U.S. command said in a statement.

The third soldier was killed when a car bomb exploded near a traffic control point in Baghdad, a military statement said. Four other soldiers were wounded in the blast.

The names of the soldiers were withheld pending notification of their next of kin.

As of Tuesday, 1,037 members of the U.S. military had died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to the Defense Department. Of those, 787 died as a result of hostile action. The figures include three military civilians.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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