Suicide bomber kills 5 U.S. soldiers in Iraq

By Ross Colvin

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

The U.S. military said in a statement that the blast, which also wounded an Iraqi interpreter, hit the soldiers while they were on foot patrol. Iraqi police said at least nine Iraqis were wounded.

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

The attack was a reminder that while violence is sharply down in the capital since thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers set up patrol bases in neighborhoods to curb sectarian violence, the city is still far from safe.

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

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

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

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

A Reuters cameraman said U.S. forces sealed off the scene of 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 topple Saddam Hussein in 2003. Seven soldiers have died so far this month, compared to 81 for the whole of March 2007.

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

Some 2,000 U.S. soldiers are being withdrawn from Baghdad under a Pentagon plan to pull out five brigades from Iraq by July 31. A second brigade in the capital is also due to be withdrawn.

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

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