Roadside bomb kills U.S. servicewoman

Servicewomen have seen more combat in the Iraq war than ever before.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military said Saturday that a female soldier died in a roadside bomb attack on her patrol south of Baghdad on Thursday, marking the 85th killing of an American servicewoman since the invasion.

The U.S. did not release the soldier’s name pending notification of next of kin.

Technically, female servicewomen are not assigned to offensive combat missions in Iraq, but they often participate in raids, patrols and other active duty in a variety of roles, such as flying helicopters or dealing with Iraqi women during U.S. operations.

Because of that, casualties among American servicewomen have been relatively rare, constituting fewer than 3 percent of the total military deaths among the U.S.-led coalition forces, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks fatalities in the Iraq war.

Still, women have seen more combat during the Iraq war than in any previous U.S. engagement, and their causes of death are largely the same as those of their male counterparts, including roadside bombs, mortar attacks, suicide bombers and the downing of helicopters.

On Oct. 5, Army Reserve Spc. Rachel L. Hugo, 24, of Madison, Wis., died in Baiji, northwest of Baghdad, when insurgents attacked her unit with a roadside bomb and small arms fire. The most recent death of a female in a hostile fire incident was that of Army Staff Sgt. Lillian Clamens, 35, of Lawton, Okla., who was killed Oct. 10 in a rocket attack on Camp Victory, the main U.S. military base in Iraq. Clamens, an administrative clerk, had three children and died two days before she was scheduled to return home.

Also Saturday , the U.S. said it killed five possible terrorists with suspected ties to al-Qaida in Iraq with an airstrike on their hideout south of Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Officials said they had detained 10 others in three operations in northern and central Iraq on Friday night and Saturday.

The U.S. also announced that Iraqi forces captured two suspected terrorists Saturday in one of Sunni Islam’s holiest mosques, the Abu Hanifa mosque in eastern Aadhamiya. The suspects were said to be involved in roadside bombings, kidnappings, murder and attacks on Iraqi and U.S. security forces throughout Baghdad, and were reportedly using the mosque as a base of operations. Ten others were detained.

On the floor of Iraq’s Parliament on Saturday, lawmaker Jalaluddin Sagheer accused Iraqi Army soldiers of killing two teenagers while participating with U.S. forces on raids in the Atifiya neighborhood of northwest Baghdad, and said a third was killed in a later raid.

A delegation of Kurdish politicians announced what they said was a successful visit in Najaf with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, in a bid to marshal broader support for Kurdistan and opposition to Turkish incursions over the Iraq border to fight guerrillas there.

In Baghdad, police said a series of bombings and shootings killed two and wounded 12 , including three Iraqi policemen. Gunmen fired into a minibus of Shiite pilgrims visiting a shrine in Kadhimiya, wounding three, and a car bomb exploded in the parking lot of a Mansur supermarket whose name translates to “Mr. Milk.”

Gunmen killed an Iraqi police officer and wounded two others near Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad. In Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, roadside bomb and gunfire attacks left two Iraqi police officers dead and three injured on Friday night and Saturday, police said.