Six US soldiers and an interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad yesterday, the US military said in a statement today. The soldiers were part of a unit uncovering arms caches around the capital.
Earlier it was reported that a truck bomb laden with chlorine gas exploded before it rammed into a police checkpoint near the Iraqi city of Ramadi today, making 11 people sick, a local official said.
Faleh al-Dulaimi, a spokesman for an association of local tribes in western Anbar province fighting al Qaeda militants, said police opened fire on the truck before it ran into the checkpoint in the town of Zangoura, north of Ramadi. The explosion released the gas, Dulaimi said.
There has been a spate of chlorine truck bomb attacks in recent months blamed on al-Qaeda militants, mainly in Anbar province. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar, stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency.