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5 U.S. Troops Killed By Iraq Road Bomb

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By KIM GAMEL and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, The Associated Press

Published: January 29, 2008

BAGHDAD - In a daring ambush, insurgents blasted a U.S. patrol with a roadside bomb Monday and showered survivors with gunfire from a mosque in increasingly lawless Mosul. Five U.S. soldiers were killed in the blast - even as Iraqi troops entered the northern city to challenge al-Qaida in Iraq.

Iraqi troops, helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles, converged on Mosul for what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed would be a decisive battle against al-Qaida in its last major urban stronghold.

The attack, the deadliest since six soldiers died Jan. 9 in a booby-trapped house north of Baghdad, raised the Pentagon's death count in January to at least 36.

Tensions in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, have spiked after the explosion last week in an abandoned apartment that authorities say was used to stash insurgents' weapons and bombs. As many as 60 were killed and 200 injured.

The Mosul unrest stands in sharp relief to a significant decline in bloodshed elsewhere in Iraq in recent months. The relative calm is credited to a U.S.-led security crackdown, a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq and a cease-fire order by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for his powerful Mahdi Army. Influential al-Sadr movement members said Monday they have urged the anti-U.S. cleric to end the six-month cease-fire when it expires in February, a move that could jeopardize security gains.

The Mosul attackers hit in a middle-class district popular with former officers in Saddam Hussein's military and now a suspected insurgency hotbed.

After the bomb blew apart the vehicle, killing the five soldiers, gunmen fired from a mosque. A fierce firefight ensued as U.S. and Iraqi troops secured the area, the military said. Iraqi troops entered the mosque but the gunmen had fled, a statement said.

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