Mortar Fire Kills Soldier; Senators Arrive

Four mortar rounds were fired into the 101st Airborne Division’s base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday, killing an American soldier and wounding an Iraqi working at the compound, a military spokeswoman said.

The attack came on the same day that Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) traveled to Baghdad with a message that it wasn’t too late to bring the United Nations back to Iraq.

The senators said the expense and political burden of administering Iraq would be made easier with the U.N.’s stamp of legitimacy and help in transferring power to Iraqis.

Between meetings with U.S. commanders, civilian officials and senior Iraqis, Clinton, the wife of the former president, said: “I’m a big believer that we ought to internationalize this, but it will take a big change in our administration’s thinking. I don’t see that it’s forthcoming.”

Clinton, who has ruled out a 2004 presidential bid, said the main purpose of her trip was “to come to Iraq to let the troops know about the great job they’re doing.”

Her comments came a day after President Bush made a surprise Thanksgiving visit to troops at Baghdad’s airport.

Both senators cautioned that the Bush administration’s new plans to speed up the transfer of power to an Iraqi government were risky, given the country’s political and social upheaval.

Reed said a “critical factor” for U.S.-led coalition authorities was securing the blessing of Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslims, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The cleric has said he wanted an elected Iraqi provisional government instead of one chosen through regional caucuses.

Reed voted against a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq; Clinton supported it.

The fatal mortar attack Friday came in a formerly calm city where Iraqi insurgents have stepped up their assaults in recent weeks.

In addition to the Mosul attack, a soldier died Thursday of a gunshot wound inside the heavily fortified U.S. base in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. Military officials would not describe the circumstances.

Since the war began, 436 U.S. soldiers have died, 298 of them after Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Central Command said soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division west of Baghdad shot a 7-year-old boy in the foot after he pointed an AK-47 at approaching U.S. troops.