Four US troops were abducted before killed

Baghdad, Jan 27: Four US soldiers were abducted from an Iraqi local government compound last week before being killed shortly afterward, the US military said today.

Giving further details of an apparently complex assault by guerrillas posing as Americans in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala on Jan. 20, the military said three of the four were found dead by Iraqi police and one died on his way to hospital.

In all, the military said at the time, five soldiers were killed in the attack by still unidentified assailants in Kerbala, 110 km south of Baghdad.

The new account in a statement confirmed remarks from Iraqi officials who described seeing only one dead U.S. soldier at the provincial government office, of police letting attackers into the compound because they looked American and spoke English and of American bodies found in a lawless area some miles away.

''The armed militants wore American-looking uniforms and carried U S-type weapons convincing Iraqi checkpoints to allow their passage,'' the military said, describing the attackers as ''insurgents'', typically a term used for Sunni Arab guerrillas active in rural areas of Babil province, just north of Kerbala.

From at least five four-wheel drive vehicles up to a dozen attackers killed one American soldier and wounded three with a grenade. It added: ''The attackers broke off the assault withdrawing from the compound with four captured U S soldiers.'' Three Humvee patrol vehicles had been damaged by explosions.

The military said Iraqi police were suspicious of the convoy as it passed their checkpoint and set off in pursuit. They found five SUV vehicles, uniforms and other equipment abandoned at Mahaweel, 35 km away in an area where al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgent groups are active.

''Two soldiers were found handcuffed together in the back of one of the SUVs. Both had suffered gunshot wounds and were dead.

A third soldier was found shot and dead on the ground,'' it said.

''Nearby, the fourth soldier was still alive, despite a gunshot wound to the head,'' it added, saying the soldier died as police drove him to a local hospital.

The complexity of the attack in an otherwise calm Shi'ite city, heavily guarded for the 10-day Shi'ite religious rite of Ashura, was startling for the U S forces. The last time troops were abducted was in June, in Babil province, between Baghdad and Kerbala and commonly dubbed the Triangle of Death.

Two soldiers were seized from an isolated post during an attack near Yusufiya. They were found dead some days later.

Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman in Baghdad, said in the statement: ''The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution.''

Reuters