Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat

BAGHDAD, 11 October 2003 — Two US soldiers were killed and four wounded in a nighttime ambush in a teeming Shiite slum in Baghdad where a suicide car bomb attack on a police station hours earlier had claimed at least 10 lives.

The Americans said their troops were lured into an ambush late Thursday night, while residents said a firefight broke out when US forces closed in on a cleric’s headquarters.

The violence in Sadr City heightened tensions between the American occupation force and Iraq’s Shiites in a country already plagued with bombings, protests and almost daily attacks against US troops six months after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Thursday night’s clash also left at least seven Iraqis wounded.

US Army spokesman Lt. Col. George Krivo said the US patrol was ambushed after being “lured in by a group of civilians requesting humanitarian assistance.” Guerrillas then opened fire on them, including with rocket-propelled grenades.

“The (troops) returned fire and got out of the kill zone. Unfortunately we took two killed and four wounded,” Krivo said.

More than 10,000 people shouted “no to America” during a funeral procession of the two Iraqis. “Yes to the martyrs, no to America, no to the Governing Council,” the mourners roared as the two coffins were held aloft.

Meanwhile, explosions caused large fires at two parallel oil pipelines in northern Iraq, the director general of Iraq’s Northern Oil Co. said. The first explosion started a fire at 7:15 p.m. in a pipeline linking the northern city of Kirkuk with Al-Debs oil fields, Adel Gazzaz said. A second blast at 8:30 p.m. started a fire in a parallel pipeline.