Two U.S. soldiers killed in ambush near Baghdad

BAGHDAD – Two U.S. soldiers were killed and three others were injured along with their Iraqi interpreter in a shootout today southeast of the capital, the military said.

Iraqi security officials and witnesses said the soldiers were ambushed by a gunman outside the Madaen municipal council building.

News of the attack came as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki promised Monday to extend a military crackdown to Diyala province north and east of the capital after at least 25 people were killed and scores injured there the previous day in a suicide bombing and mortar fire.

There were conflicting accounts of the attack in Madaen.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad and police at the scene said a municipal official pulled out a Kalashnikov and sprayed the soldiers with bullets as they arrived for a meeting, sending colleagues fleeing for their lives as the Americans returned fire. But residents said the assailant was a former council member who joined the Sunni Muslim insurgency after he was ousted from his job in sectarian fighting in 2006. He opened fire after the meeting, they said.

“He was sitting in his vehicle right in front of the municipal headquarters and opened fire with a Kalashnikov on the Americans as they were leaving the building,” said the owner of a nearby farm equipment store, who asked to be identified by a traditional nickname, Abu Ali. “Other Americans immediately opened fire on [the man] in his car, and he was killed instantly.”

Khalid Dulaimi was in his grocery store across the street from the municipality when gun shots rang out.

“I heard the shooting, and people started scrambling,” he said.

U.S. forces sealed off the area, and military helicopters swooped in to collect the wounded, police and witnesses said.

Maj. John Hall, a U.S. military spokesman, said initial reports indicated one “enemy” had been killed in addition to the U.S. casualties, but provided no further details.

At least 4,103 U.S. service members have been killed since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to the independent site icasualties.org.

Madaen, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, is in a region frequented by Sunni and Shiite extremists that became known as the “triangle of death.”

While the number of attacks nationwide has dropped to levels last seen in 2004, U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned that militants remain capable of inflicting lethal attacks.

At least 15 people were killed and 40 injured Sunday when a woman blew herself up at the civics center in the Diyala provincial capital of Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Hours later, a volley of mortar fire slammed into a checkpoint manned by Sunni tribesmen hired by the U.S. military to guard their areas against militants. Police said at least 10 people were killed and 24 injured in that attack, which took place north of Baqubah, in the village of Aidam.

The U.S.-backed guards are credited with helping to bring down violence in Sunni-dominated areas and are frequent targets of attack.

The U.S. military poured troops into Diyala province last year to drive out Sunni militants who had made Baqubah the capital of their self-declared caliphate. But while the militants no longer control large swathes of territory there, it has proven difficult to dislodge them from the lush region of orchards and waterways stretching from Baghdad to the Iranian border.

Maliki promised to finish the job in Diyala in a speech delivered Monday in the southern city of Amarah, where Iraqi forces began a crackdown against Shiite militiamen Thursday. The operation in Amarah is part of a push to assert government authority in areas controlled by Shiite and Sunni armed factions.

“This government confronted the gangs, the outlaws, the former regime thugs and Al Qaeda … from Basra to Mosul and other sites,” Maliki said in comments broadcast on state television. “Today [we are] in Amarah, and tomorrow we will complete the mission of our armed forces in Diyala.”

 alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Special correspondents in Baghdad and Taji contributed to this report.