Suicide bomber kills 5 U.S. soldiers in Baghdad

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By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up amongU.S. soldiers in central Baghdad on Monday, killing five andwounding three in the worst single attack on U.S. forces in theIraqi capital in nearly a year.

The U.S. military said in a statement that the blast, whichalso wounded an Iraqi interpreter, hit the soldiers while theywere on foot patrol. Iraqi police said at least nine Iraqiswere wounded.

The military blamed the attack on a suicide bomber. Police,citing witnesses, said the soldiers had been walking in theupscale Mansour district when a man wearing a vest packed withexplosives walked up to them and blew himself up.

The attack was a reminder that while violence is sharplydown in the capital since thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiersset up patrol bases in neighbourhoods to curb sectarianviolence, the city is still far from safe.

Nearly 70 people were killed in a double bombing inBaghdad's central Karrada district last Thursday in an attackthat the U.S. military blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

"We remain resolute in our resolve to protect the people ofIraq and kill or capture those who would bring them harm,"Colonel Allen Batschelet, chief of staff of U.S. forces inBaghdad, said in a statement after Monday's attack.

The statement said four soldiers were killed in the blastand one died later of wounds.

A police official at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital said ninewounded Iraqis had been admitted, including a policeman. "Theysaid a suicide bomber, a man, blew himself up among Americansoldiers," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Reuters cameraman said U.S. forces sealed off the sceneof blast, which occurred outside a large computer store.

WOMAN BOMBER

Monday's deaths took to at least 3,979 the number of U.S.soldiers killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion to toppleSaddam Hussein in 2003. Seven soldiers have died so far thismonth, compared to 81 for the whole of March 2007.

The worst previous single attack on U.S. soldiers inBaghdad was in June, when five soldiers were killed in aroadside bomb attack on their patrol.

Some 2,000 U.S. soldiers are being withdrawn from Baghdadunder a Pentagon plan to pull out five brigades from Iraq byJuly 31. A second brigade in the capital is also due to bewithdrawn.

They are among the 30,000 extra troops sent to Iraq lastyear in a move the U.S. administration said was meant to givethe Iraqi government time to reach a political accommodationwith its opponents. The U.S. military says the withdrawaltimetable will not be affected by last week's bombing.

In other violence on Monday, a female suicide bomber killeda prominent Sunni Arab tribal chief who headed a neighbourhoodsecurity unit and three others in Diyala province, police said.

The neighbourhood units have been credited by the UnitedStates for sharp falls in violence across Iraq.

Police said the woman went to the home of Thaer Saggbanal-Karkhi in Kanaan, southeast of the provincial capitalBaquba, knocked on the door and told guards she needed to speakto him.

When Karkhi came to the door she detonated a vest packedwith explosives she was wearing underneath her robes, policesaid. Karkhi's niece was among the dead and two of hisbodyguards were wounded.

Al Qaeda has increasingly used women wearing suicide veststo carry out strikes after tighter security and protectiveconcrete blast walls made car bombings more difficult.

In Sulaimaniya province, a suicide car bomber blew upoutside a large hotel popular with foreigners and governmentofficials, killing three people, a local doctor said. It was arare attack in Iraq's mostly stable Kurdistan region.

U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith said onSunday a recent increase in bombings was not the start of awider trend and that violence was down overall.

(Additional reporting by Sherko Raouf in Sulaimaniya, PaulTait in Baghdad; editing by Andrew Roche)

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