Two US soldiers in Iraq found dead

By Mussab Al-Khairalla

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two U.S. soldiers who went missing
after an attack on their checkpoint were found dead on Monday
night, and a senior Iraqi defense official said their bodies
showed signs of “barbaric” torture.

“Coalition forces have recovered what we believe are the
remains of the soldiers,” U.S. military spokesman Major General
William Caldwell told a news conference in Baghdad on Tuesday.

He said the bodies would be returned to the United States
for identification and autopsies to determine how they died.

Iraqi Defense Ministry official Major General Abdul Aziz
Mohammed told Reuters earlier that a joint U.S.-Iraqi force
found the bodies of Privates Thomas Lowell Tucker, 25, and
Kristian Menchaca, 23, near an electricity plant in Yusufiya.

He said the bodies showed signs of “barbaric torture.”

The U.S. military launched an intensive hunt for the
soldiers involving aircraft and thousands of troops after
vowing not to leave them “out there.”

The discovery came as more bomb blasts shook Baghdad,
killing nine people despite a security clampdown. The U.S.
military also said troops hunting insurgents linked to al Qaeda
had killed 15 gunmen in raids north of the capital.

The Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella body of insurgent
groups led by al Qaeda, claimed in an Internet posting on
Monday to have abducted the two soldiers. However, it provided
no video nor documentary evidence that it was holding them and
some U.S. officials cast doubt on the statement.

The two went missing at dusk on Friday after an ambush at a
checkpoint in Yusufiya, a town in an area south of Baghdad some
Iraqis call the “Triangle of Death,” which is an al Qaeda
stronghold. Another soldier was killed in the attack.

Their deaths dealt a blow to the U.S. military after it
killed the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an
air strike on a “safe house” near Baquba north of Baghdad.

U.S. forces hunting insurgents linked to a suspected senior
al Qaeda member launched simultaneous pre-dawn raids near
Baquba on Tuesday, the U.S military said.

U.S. soldiers came under small arms fire from the rooftop
of a house in the village of Qaduri Ali al Shahin, 13 km (8
miles) north of Baquba as the operation got under way. Troops
and supporting aircraft returned fire, killing 11 gunmen.

FORCED LANDING

One helicopter had to make a forced landing after hitting
utility lines. None of the crew was hurt but three gunmen were
killed by aerial fire when they tried to attack the aircraft.

Three suspected insurgents were also captured hiding in a
house among nine women, it said, adding that U.S. troops had
found 10 AK-47 assault rifles and explosives in the raids.

A man identifying himself as Mohammed Jabar al-Qaduri said
two of the dead were his sons, Jassem and Mazen, and that all
the victims had worked at a poultry farm adjacent to the
houses.

“They did not attack any Americans or Humvees. We don’t
have any problems with the Americans. We don’t have any
foreigners here,” he said, wearing a traditional Arab headdress
and sitting slumped on the dirt ground in the shade of a truck.

A police source and residents said there were 13 victims
and they included a 12-year-old boy. Reuters footage showed a
bloodied mattress on the floor of one of the houses. Residents
said the boy had been sleeping on it when he was shot.

As the bodies were loaded onto the trucks, one man lifted
up the blanket covering one victim and cried out “Why God,
why?.”

Caldwell insisted no civilians had been killed in what he
described as an “extremely long firefight.”

HUNT FOR INSURGENTS

U.S. forces have stepped up their hunt for al Qaeda
insurgents following Zarqawi’s death and the government
announced a security clampdown in the capital to try to thwart
the car bombings that exact a deadly daily toll on civilians.

A car bomb killed seven people in a crowded Baghdad market
on Tuesday, while a roadside bomb killed two in the city.

In the southern city of Basra, a suicide bomber attacked a
crowd of elderly and disabled people as they gathered to
collect pensions. The bomber, who had two belts of explosives
strapped around him, wounded five people.

Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said on Tuesday
Japan would withdraw its 550 soldiers, engaged in
reconstruction and humanitarian work in Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami in Baghdad and Ahmed
Abbas in Qaduri Ali al Shahin)