3 American Soldiers Die in Ambush in Iraq

Iraqi guerrillas ambushed an American patrol searching for a weapons cache in Saddam Hussein’s native village of Al Auja late Thursday, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding two more with small arms fire.

The troops were looking for a store of rocket-propelled grenades believed used in recent attacks against the 4th Infantry Division, which is headquartered in Hussein’s former Tikrit palace, a military spokesman said early today.

Details of the attack were sketchy, but it appeared to be the highest death toll in a single attack since three soldiers were killed by a grenade dropped from the upper floor of a Baqubah children’s hospital in late July. Thursday’s toll raised the total number of U.S. military personnel killed since the war began March 20 to about 300, with more than 1,100 wounded.

The spokesman provided no details on whether any of the attackers were killed.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s former defense minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, surrendered to U.S. forces, a mediator said. Dawood Bagistani, a local human rights official who has acted as go-between in talks with Jabburi Tai, announced the surrender at a news conference.

Al Auja, six miles south of Tikrit, is the ancestral home of Hussein and considered a bastion of support for the former leader. Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusai, were buried there in early August.

In a separate attack earlier Thursday near another Sunni Muslim-dominated city, Fallouja, guerrillas struck a U.S. convoy, setting three military vehicles ablaze and wounding two soldiers. Three Iraqis also were wounded in the cross-fire, one seriously, hospital officials said, in the latest incident of insurgency in a rural area along the Euphrates River.

Hours later, residents rallied around a young man bearing a poster of Saddam Hussein and said they would like to see their former leader back in power.

The ambush near Fallouja, which began with the detonation of roadside mines, occurred just one day after an Arabic satellite television channel broadcast an audiotape message from a man identifying himself as Hussein. The tape called on supporters to step up attacks to oust the U.S.

As darkness fell over the Fallouja area, tracer rounds could be seen arcing over the city, and there was a sound of a distant explosion. An American reservist, speaking to a reporter but declining to give his name, said the main U.S. base in Fallouja is a target for almost nightly attacks -- although the rounds are badly aimed.

Most of Iraqi territory is considered under control five months after the U.S.-led coalition ousted Hussein’s forces, but Hussein loyalists and Islamic militants in the so-called Sunni triangle, bounded by Tikrit, Baghdad and Ramadi, remain stubbornly rebellious.

Anger toward the Americans in the Sunni triangle has been intensified by a series of mistaken killings of noncombatants, the latest of which was the reported death Wednesday of a teenage boy in a shooting incident apparently sparked by celebratory gunfire during a wedding reception in Fallouja.

Neighbors said the youth who was killed was Sufyan Daoud Kubaisi, 17, a passerby. He was struck by gunshots fired by the Americans, who believed they were under attack when they heard the wedding gunfire, the neighbors said. Six other people were injured, they added.

The U.S. military was investigating.

Thursday’s convoy attack outside Fallouja took place in the village of Mariq, on the road to Ramadi.

According to Sgt. Amy Abbott, two U.S. solders were wounded and three of their vehicles destroyed when their convoy was struck by mines and then by small arms fire. A Humvee and two military trucks were set ablaze.

Placing explosives on routes used by U.S. forces, detonating them by remote control as convoys pass and then attacking from cover with automatic rifles or rocket-propelled grenades has become a favorite tactic of the rebels, and U.S. officials have said it reflects a degree of increasing sophistication.

The site of the midafternoon attack was a divided highway that goes through Khaldiya -- with scattered date palms on one side and houses on the other. After the burned vehicles were removed by U.S. forces, the only signs of the fighting were a shot-up truck in the median strip and bullet marks on some of the homes.

Wafiq Hamid, 29, carried a portrait of Saddam Hussein to show his support for the ousted leader.

His friend, Yahia Jabber, a mechanic, praised the attackers as religious people.

“They want nothing for themselves,” he said. “The only solution is for the Americans to leave Iraq and for Saddam Hussein to come back. With a one-hour speech on television, he would bring back security and stability.”

Although such sentiments are heard frequently in Sunni-dominated areas of western Iraq, especially in rural tribal areas, they are rare among the majority Shiite population in a broad swath of the country or among the ethnic Kurds concentrated in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, offered his personal apologies for the killing of eight Iraqi police in Fallouja on Sept. 12. Members of the 82nd Airborne Division, newly assigned to duty outside a hospital on the outskirts of the city, opened fire on Iraqi police returning to the city after an unsuccessful pursuit of suspected robbers.

Times staff writer Mark Fineman and Samir Mohammed of The Times’ Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.