Violence in Iraq kills three Americans

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two American security contractors were killed and a third was wounded in a roadside bomb attack south of the Iraqi capital, the U.S. Embassy said Sunday.

The three were working for Blackwater Security, a North Carolina-based contracting firm that provides security for State Department officials in Iraq. They were attacked on the main road to Hillah, south of Baghdad, U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan said.

In other violence, a U.S. soldier was gunned down late Saturday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The death brought the number of U.S. military personnel killed since the war began in March 2003 to at least 1,514, according to an Associated Press count.

U.S. contractors, too, often are targeted by anti-U.S. guerrillas. At least 232 American civilian security and reconstruction contractors had been killed in Iraq through 2004, according to the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

The Blackwater employees killed Saturday were believed to have been traveling in a black Chevrolet Suburban, a foreign security official in Baghdad said on condition of anonymity. The road south of Baghdad goes through an area known as the “Triangle of Death” because of the frequency of insurgent attacks.

“I can confirm that two American employees of Blackwater Security were killed early yesterday afternoon on the road to Hillah when an IED exploded next to their vehicle,” Callahan said Sunday.

“IED” is a military acronym for an “improvised explosive device,” or homemade bomb.

Officials at Blackwater’s headquarters in Moyock, N.C., could not be reached for comment.

In March 2004, four Blackwater employees were killed in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah, and two of their bodies were suspended from a bridge. The U.S. military responded with a bloody three-week siege of the city west of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Kurdish leaders said they were near a final agreement Sunday with the majority Shiites to form a coalition government when Iraq’s first democratically elected Parliament in modern history convenes later this week.

Further talks are slated in Baghdad today, two days before the National Assembly convenes for the first time since Jan. 30 elections. The deal calls for Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, to be named president. Conservative Islamic Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Shiite majority, would become prime minister.

“The basic Kurdish demands are not about the Kurds only but the whole of Iraq, we are working for an Iraqi process – a coalition government that respects the constitution,” said Interim Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd.

The Kurds won 75 seats in the 275-member National Assembly during Jan. 30 elections. The alliance won 140 seats and needs Kurdish support to assemble the two-thirds majority to elect a president, who will then give a mandate to the prime minister.

In other violence, two Iraqis were killed and five injured in a roadside bombing intended for a U.S. convoy in southeast Baghdad on Sunday, said Dr. Ali Karim at Kindi hospital.

In Sharqat, 160 miles northwest of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle on Saturday outside the house of the town’s chief of special police forces, said police Col. Jassim al-Jubouri. The chief was not harmed, but four people were killed and several others were injured.

In Mosul, 225 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed five insurgents in street fighting, the military said. Three other people, a woman and two children, were killed inadvertently when an American helicopter gunship fired at insurgents, according to Mosul’s Al-Jumhuri Teaching Hospital.