US military deaths reach 2,000 in Iraq war
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-26 14:18

In the latest fighting, US and Iraqi troops raided insurgent safe houses Tuesday northwest of Qaim, a tense town near the Syrian border along a major infiltration route for foreign fighters. At one safe house, where women and children were also staying, an exchange of fire detonated an insurgent's suicide vest, causing the roof to collapse, a US statement said.

People protest the war in Iraq on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005, on a downtown corner in Nashville, Tenn. Demonstrators gathered during rush hour after news came out that the U.S. death toll for the war has reached 2,000. [AP]

"The women and children were rescued from the rubble and treated by medical personnel," the statement added. US aircraft then destroyed three buildings after the survivors were taken to a safe area, the statement said.

Elsewhere, suicide car bombs exploded Tuesday in the generally peaceful Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, killing 12 people. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility in an Internet statement.

The group also said it was behind the three suicide car bombs aimed at the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Baghdad. Deputy Interior Minister Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal said 17 people were killed — mostly hotel guards and passers-by — in Monday's attack, which involved bombers driving two cars and a cement truck.

The US soldier who shot and killed the truck driver said he initially had a hard time seeing the truck drive through the breach that the first car explosion had created in the concrete wall.

"Once the dust and the debris settled down, I noticed the truck had already breached through our perimeter," Spc. Darrell Green told CNN American Morning. "He backed up and then pulled forward. As he was doing that, I engaged in machine gun and took out the driver. If he had made it through, he could have done a lot more damage, a lot more casualties than what actually happened."

In a Web posting, al-Qaida in Iraq said it carried out the hotel attack to target a "dirty harbor of intelligence agents and private American, British and Australian security companies." The hotel complex houses offices of the AP and other media organizations.

Also Tuesday, insurgents killed six Iraqis — a 7-year-old boy, two Iraqi soldiers and three policemen — and wounded 45 others in a series of attacks in Baghdad.

A video posted on an Islamic extremist Web site showed a US soldier being shot in Iraq while guarding an armored vehicle. The militant Islamic Army in Iraq said one of its snipers killed the soldier in Baghdad on Monday, but the US military said it could not verify the authenticity of the claim.