Two U.S. troops, three Iraqis killed in attacks

Baghdad - Two American soldiers and three Iraqis were killed in separate bomb attacks Saturday, a day after two U.N. security experts arrived in the capital to study the possible return of the world body's international staff.

The American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb that struck their convoy near Fallujah, a city 50 miles west of Baghdad in an area that has been a center of anti-American resistance. The latest deaths brought to 509 the number of American service members who have died since the United States and its allies launched the Iraq war March 20.

In another attack, a truck bomb exploded soon after a U.S. patrol passed by in Samarra, which also is in the restive so-called Sunni Triangle, an area north and west of Baghdad that is home to diehard Saddam Hussein loyalists who have been blamed for most of the insurgent attacks on civilians and U.S. forces.

The blast killed three Iraqis and wounded 40 people including seven American soldiers, Capt. Jennifer Knight of the 720th Military Police Battalion said.

The American military police patrol was turning into a police station to join Iraqi police when the explosion occurred behind it, Sgt. Maj. Nathan Wilson of the 720th Military Police Battalion.

Despite Saddam's capture on Dec. 13, insurgents loyal to him have continued to attack police stations and U.S. troops.

Also Saturday, at least one sniper in a building shot and wounded an American soldier who was in a foot patrol in a Baghdad neighborhood, Maj. Kevin West said.

A bridge across the Tigris River in Baghdad, leading to the coalition headquarters, was closed by U.S. troops for two hours Saturday. Witnesses said they were searching for a bomb, but this could not be independently confirmed.

Baghdad has been a frequent target of insurgents. In one of the deadliest attacks, the U.N. headquarters in the capital was bombed in August, killing 22 people including top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan withdrew all foreign U.N. staff in October.

A U.N. military adviser and a security coordinator arrived Friday in Baghdad, the first foreign staff to return since then.

They planned to meet with officials from the U.S.-led coalition and inspect buildings the world body might use, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"Their primary focus will be to open lines of communication ... and also to look after the interests of our national staff in Iraq," Dujarric said.

Annan also is considering sending a separate security team that would be needed if he decides to send experts to Iraq to determine whether direct elections for a transitional government were feasible.

That team would help resolve a dispute between the coalition and Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who is demanding direct elections as opposed to a U.S. plan calls for letting regional caucuses choose a legislature. The legislature would then name a new Iraqi government that will take over from the coalition on July 1, under the U.S. plan adopted on Nov. 15.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite leader, said Friday the plan "as it stands ... is unacceptable." But Americans and others are slowly coming around to the need for elections, he said.

Al-Hakim, who was among members of a Governing Council delegation that met with President Bush on Tuesday at the White House, heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's most powerful Shiite political group.

He said if the U.N. experts conclude an early vote is not feasible, then sovereignty could be handed over to the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council. But he added it was "a last-resort option."

Al-Hakim's views carry considerable weight in Iraq, where the Shiite majority has risen to dominate the political scene after decades of suppression by the Sunni Arab minority.

The United States maintains that it is impossible to hold elections in such a short time given the lack of a census and electoral rolls and the continuing violence.

The Bush administration said Friday that it was holding to its July 1 deadline for ending the U.S. occupation but the method of selecting a new government wasn't decided.

"We have an open mind about how to most effectively facilitate an orderly transfer of sovereignty," State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.

Under the U.S. power-transfer plan, Iraqis also will vote early next year to chose delegates who will draft a constitution. The draft will later be adopted in a national referendum. The third and final 2005 vote, under the plan, is to elect a new parliament.

On Friday, a U.S. Army OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter attached crashed in northern Iraq, killing the two pilots, the U.S. military said. The deaths raised the American forces' death toll in the Iraq conflict to 507. The cause of the crash was unclear. -- Associated Press

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