The U.S. military has suffered a first fatality in one of a new fleet of heavily armoured vehicles aimed at protecting troops from roadside bombs, the military confirmed on Tuesday. One soldier was killed and three were injured when a bomb exploded next to the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armoured truck near Arab Jabour on Baghdad's southern outskirts on Saturday. "It does appear that this was the first fatality involving an improvised explosive device on an MRAP," U.S. military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said, according to Reuters.
The U.S. military has some 1,500 of the vehicles operating in Iraq, reducing its reliance on the less well-protected Humvee military vehicles.
The New York Times newspaper reported on Tuesday that the dead soldier was a gunner. Danielson conveyed the Arab Jabour incident was under investigation. He said the other three wounded soldiers inside the vehicle had not suffered life-threatening injuries.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed one student and injured a number of others when he detonated a trolley laden with explosives in a schoolyard north of Baghdad on Tuesday, Iraqi police said. According to them, 21 people were injured, a mix of students and teachers who were arriving for classes at the boys secondary school in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province.
The bomber hid the explosives in a trolley that he had pushed into the school, police said, according to Reuters.
