5 US Soldiers Killed by Bombs in Iraq

By LAUREN FRAYER

BAGHDAD – Five American soldiers were killed in two separate roadside bomb attacks, the U.S. military said Tuesday, after Iraqi soldiers discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of the capital.

The soldiers died Monday, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq’s communications division.

"We lost five soldiers yesterday in two unfortunate incidents, both involving IEDs," Smith told reporters in Baghdad’s heavily-guarded Green Zone.

The mass grave was found Saturday during a joint operation with U.S. forces in the Lake Tharthar area, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Iraqi police last month reported finding 25 bullet-riddled bodies, some decapitated, in a mass grave in Nadhum village, close to Lake Tharthar. At the time, police said it appeared the victims had died within the past three months.

But an Anbar provincial police official, Col. Jubair Rashid Naief, said Tuesday that he believed these were not the same bodies and that this was a second mass grave found in the area in less than a month.

Naief said the bodies were found in a drainage canal, and that some of the victims were wearing heavy clothes – indicating they may have been killed last winter.

After the discovery, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an operation Sunday, including ground raids and air assaults targeting al-Qaida in the area, the U.S. statement said.

About 30 suspects were detained, it said. Two car bomb facilities and a number of weapons caches also were found, it added.

Iraqi officials are investigating the mass grave, trying to identify the bodies and notify families.