Ambush kills American; two soldiers disappear

Americans were wounded after an Army truck struck an explosive device.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An American soldier was killed in an ambush in southern Iraq, the U.S. military said today, after it announced arrests in the possible abduction of two U.S. servicemen.
The soldier was killed while investigating a car theft Thursday in Najaf, 100 miles southwest of Baghdad, a statement from U.S. Central Command said. The soldier was attached to the 1st U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force.
The soldier's name was being withheld pending notification of relatives, Centcom said. It said the soldier died before a medical evacuation team arrived.
Also today, Sgt. Patrick Compton, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said three suspects were detained in the disappearance of two American soldiers. U.S. forces kept up ground and aerial searches in search of the two soldiers, Compton said.
The men were guarding the perimeter of a rocket demolition site near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, on Wednesday when they failed to answer a radio call, Compton said.
Unknown fate
"We don't know if they were abducted or they were just killed," he said.
The report of the soldier's death near Najaf came amid yet more attacks on Americans today.
Just northwest of Baghdad this morning, a U.S. Army truck struck an explosive device on a dirt road. A U.S. soldier and an eyewitness said wounded Americans were evacuated by helicopter. It was not clear what the explosive was.
The U.S. soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Americans were driving to Baghdad to make telephone calls to their families when the explosion happened.
Ambushes and hostile fire elsewhere in Iraq on Thursday killed at least one U.S. soldier, two Iraqi civilians and wounded at least eight other Americans.
Until recently, almost all violence against U.S.-led occupying forces in Iraq had centered around the Sunni Muslim-dominated area north and west of Baghdad, where former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein enjoyed a degree of support. In the past few days, attacks have spread to the Shiite-dominated south.
Al-Qaida link not found
Meanwhile, members of a special U.N. terrorism committee investigating Al-Qaida said Thursday that they had seen no evidence of the terrorist network's alleged ties with Iraq, which were a major justification President Bush cited for going to war.
"Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and Al-Qaida," Michael Chandler, the committee's chief investigator, said at a briefing at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Members of the committee, created to monitor Al-Qaida and its financing, also said the U.S. government had given them no information to support its claims of collaboration between Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the former Saddam regime.
On Capitol Hill, Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee agreed that the panel would look into a Pentagon office that was set up by pro-invasion hard-liners to process intelligence from Iraqi exile groups that the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department regarded as untrustworthy.
Late Thursday, a British plane dropped leaflets on the southern town of Majar al-Kabir, where six British soldiers and at least five Iraqi civilians were killed in clashes Tuesday.
Expression of regret
The leaflets said the U.S.-led coalition regret the loss of life among Iraqi civilians, and added that coalition forces were not behind the deaths.
"We will not return to punish anyone since these are the methods of Saddam's regime. We will return to set up good relations with you because of our concern about a secure Iraq," the three-paragraph statement read. "Don't let rumors ruin our good relations."
The leaflet added that British forces -- who have not been seen in the volatile town since Tuesday's clash -- would return to Majar al-Kabir to repair the damage done during Saddam's rule, without saying when.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, assailants blew up a U.S. military vehicle with a roadside bomb, dropped grenades from an overpass, destroyed a civilian SUV traveling with U.S. troops, demolished an oil pipeline and fired an apparent rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. Army truck.
Officials played down the violence, but the surge in attacks is causing concern that the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq could be turning into a guerrilla war.
A military spokesman, Maj. William Thurmond, said the spate of ambushes could be a response to recent U.S. raids on Baath party strongholds.
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