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Roadside Bomb Kills Iraqi in Baghdad

Posted on: Tuesday, 30 December 2003, 06:00 CST

Rebels detonated a roadside bomb as a U.S. convoy drove by in central Baghdad Tuesday morning, killing one Iraqi and wounding another, police said.

No U.S. troops were injured, said police Maj. Khatan Jabir.

A U.S. military Humvee was parked askew in the middle of the road shortly after the blast in the densely populated Karrada neighborhood, beside a shattered concrete median.

The explosion cracked windows on the street lined with mom-and-pop shops selling vegetables and groceries. People nearby said the dead man worked in a nearby shop.

"They've not killed any Americans, just Iraqis as usual. We consider it terrorism," shopkeeper Karim Abbas said bitterly.

Roadside bombs have become the preferred weapon of anti-American guerrillas who cannot match the overwhelming firepower of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, where the explosive appeared to have been planted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said American soldiers killed three suspected members of an al-Qaida linked Islamic militant group during a firefight in the northern city of Mosul. Two U.S. soldiers were wounded, the military said Monday.

In Sunday's operation against the suspected Ansar al-Islam militants, U.S. soldiers came under small arms fire while searching homes Sunday.

After the fight, U.S. troops seized two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, eight grenades and two assault rifles, the U.S. military said in a statement. The injured soldiers were in stable condition.

Six people in the house - a man, two women and three children - were turned over to Iraqi police.

Most Ansar al-Islam fighters were believed to have fled their stronghold in northern Iraq before U.S. forces invaded in March. U.S. and Kurdish forces destroyed the group's main base early in the war.

Tactics of the group, believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden's terror network, have included suicide bombs, car bombs, assassinations and raids on militiamen and politicians of the secular Kurdish government in the north.

In his interrogation, Saddam Hussein has acknowledged sending $40 billion abroad, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council said.

The Iraqi official said Saddam had provided the names of people who know where the money is.

The council is searching for the money deposited in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries, council member Iyad Allawi told the London-based Arab newspapers Al-Hayat and Asharq al-Awsat.

"Saddam has started to give information on money that has been looted from Iraq and deposited abroad," Allawi told Asharq al-Awsat. "Investigation is now concentrated on his relationship with terrorist organizations and on the money paid to elements outside Iraq."

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