An American soldier was killed and four others injured Saturday in an attack near Tikrit north of Baghdad, a military statement said. It was at least the seventh U.S. soldier killed in attacks in Iraq over the past two weeks.
Iraqi gunmen opened fire on the soldiers using small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, said the brief statement released by U.S. Central Command.
Also Saturday, Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim group said that 20 of its members have been detained by US occupation forces, but it denied they had anything to do with anti-US attacks.
A spokesman for the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), Hamed al-Bayati, said several of them had been arrested near the border with Iran.
Meanwhile, President George W. Bush told visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso that he has "full confidence" in US intelligence showing Iraq had unconventional arms, the European leader said, according to AFP.
"Of course, it's difficult to show, now, that kind of evidence. It's difficult to produce immediately all kinds of evidence," Durao Barroso told reporters in the White House's after the two leaders met.
"But ... President Bush told me that he has full confidence in the intelligence reports he received about the possession of weapons of mass destruction by the former Iraqi authorities," the prime minister noted.
Critics, including some columnists in prominent newspapers, have alleged that Bush and top aides like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exaggerated Saddam Hussein's arsenal in order to convince the US public to support the war. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
