Five US Soldiers Killed in 24 Hours

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 28, 2003

Five US Soldiers Killed in 24 Hours

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Iraqi guerrillas killed a US soldier in an overnight grenade attack south of Baghdad yesterday, as the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons showed no sign of staunching a hot summer of postwar bloodshed in Iraq.

In a reminder that tensions are not restricted to Saddam's Sunni Muslim heartlands to the north and west of the capital, troops were forced to fire rounds into the air to disperse a stone-throwing crowd in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala to the south yesterday. Locals accused troops of killing a man on Saturday.

Five dead troops in 24 hours - 10 since US soldiers killed Uday and Qusay on Tuesday - have brought the number of US troops killed by a largely unseen enemy to 49 since May 1, when President George W. Bush told servicemen that major combat had finished.

Saddam himself remains on the run with a US$25 million price on his head. US commanders say the net is tightening around him as the payment of a US$30 million bounty to the informant who betrayed his sons brings in more tip-offs. Troops have been searching across Iraq, notably around his home town of Tikrit.

"We're still on the offensive here. There's still war going on in Iraq," a US military spokesman said in Baghdad. Troops were suffering about 13 attacks a day across the country, with no obvious change in the attrition rate over the past week.

That said, a third of all of the combat deaths of the past three months have been sustained in the last nine days alone.

On Saturday, three soldiers were killed when a grenade was thrown at them as they guarded a children's hospital in Baquba, north of Baghdad, and one soldier was killed in an attack on a convoy in Abu Ghraib, on the capital's outskirts.

US commanders say that more than 140,000 soldiers can take the pain for the gain of a stable and prosperous Iraq in the long term. But hopes that eliminating Saddam's heirs will break down remaining resistance may be wishful thinking, some Iraqis say, pointing to broad resentment over the American occupation.

Iraq has signed new crude export contracts with foreign oil companies, a state oil official said yesterday. This is the second set of such deals since the ousting of Saddam Hussein.

An official at the State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) said that contracts for August 1 to December 31 were sealed with European refiners Shell, BP Plc and TotalFinaElf SA US majors ChevronTexaco Corp, ConocoPhillips, Valero Energy Corp and Marathon Oil Corp Sinochem of China; and a company from the Mitsubishi group, which is buying for Japanese refineries.

"We expect to sign with Exxon soon," the official said, referring to ExxonMobil Corp.

The official did not comment on contract volumes. Western industry sources have said they expect SOMO initially to seal contracts of two million barrels apiece with about 10 companies.

Last week, Iraq signed its first post-Saddam oil sales contracts.

Asked what prices had been set, the SOMO official said prices were already posted for August for its sales of Basra Light crude from Iraq's Mina al-Bakr port - the ranges include WTI 2nd month less US$4.95 for the United States, Dated Brent less US$2.90 for Europe and average Oman/Dubai parity for Asia.

The official made no mention of crude sales from Kirkuk, in the north. Iraq's northern export pipeline from the Kirkuk fields through Turkey has remained closed since the US occupation because of sabotage bombings and war damage.

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