Two American troops were killed in Baghdad on Friday, one when Iraqi resistance fighters attacked a convoy transporting fuel on the west side of the capital, the military said. An Iraqi driver in the convoy was also killed.
Three Marines were killed a day earlier in Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the military stated on Friday.
In Friday's attack, gunmen with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades struck a tanker truck in a convoy in Abu Ghraib on the main highway entering western Baghdad, killing a soldier.
The second soldier was killed in an attack using roadside bombs and small arms on Camp Cook, a U.S. base in northern Baghdad, the military said.
Elsewhere, a Briton was shot dead while working in Iraq as a security guard. The man was killed Thursday in a battle near the town of Hit as he worked to protect civilian contractors.
Earlier, the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the upsurge in violence in Iraq represents the "most serious" situation the "Coalition" has faced. But he said it has to be seen against the context of Saddam Hussein's "tyrannical rule."
"There is no doubt that the current situation is...the most serious that we have faced." he said. "I don't want to minimize the problems that we face but they have to be seen in a context. "Saddam held Iraq in a reign of terror...(now) the lid of the pressure cooker has come off."
Straw said it was important to remember the majority of Iraqis "like the fact that Saddam has gone". (Albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
