2 American soldiers die in mortar attack

Three Iraqi women who worked at a U.S. base were killed in an ambush.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A barrage of mortar fire struck a U.S. military encampment in central Iraq, killing two American soldiers and critically wounding a third, the military said today.
Also, in separate occurrences, gunmen ambushed a vehicle carrying Iraqi women who worked in the laundry at a U.S. military base, killing three of them, and the security chief of Spanish troops was wounded during a raid south of the capital.
Also today, the 23-year-old son of a former senior official from Saddam Hussein's Baath party was slain by an unidentified gunman in the southern city of Basra, police said.
Attack near Baqouba
Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division, said insurgents fired mortars and rockets at a U.S. military encampment outside the town of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, on Wednesday evening, killing the two soldiers and critically wounding another.
The three soldiers were standing outside the tactical operations center when the barrage hit, she said. The attack also damaged vehicles.
U.S. forces launched a counterattack, but there was no indication the insurgents sustained casualties, she said.
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.
Women attacked
The Iraqi women were attacked while riding in a minivan in Fallujah, a city 40 miles west of Baghdad that has been a stronghold of anti-coalition resistance. The minivan's driver, Khajiq Serkis, who also worked for the coalition, was wounded, said his brother, Shan Serkis.
Former Baath party members and other Saddam loyalists are believed to be behind most of the guerrilla attacks against the U.S.-led coalition forces, often setting off car bombs and roadside explosives that have killed hundreds of Iraqi men and women.
In the city of Diwaniya, 120 miles south of Baghdad, Spanish Civil Guard commander Gonzalo Perez Garcia was shot in the head today 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. He was taken to a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad in a serious condition.
Struggle for peace
U.S. forces have struggled to bring peace to Iraq in time for the planned handover of power to a transitional Iraqi government July 1.
The plan calls for selecting a legislature through caucuses in Iraq's 18 provinces in May, and that legislature then would appoint a provisional government to prepare for full elections in 2005. The plan has run into opposition from Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, whose demand for early elections has found wide support among Iraqis.
Election flexibility
On Wednesday, Shiite leaders and coalition officials signaled flexibility on holding early elections, with both sides suggesting they will follow any U.N. recommendation, officials said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said he is considering sending a team to Iraq to assess whether direct legislative elections can be held before the July 1 handover.