Blast Targeting Troops Kills 4 Civilians in Iraq

Militants who targeted a U.S. patrol with a roadside bomb Tuesday in the northern city of Mosul killed four civilians, and Baghdad shopkeepers and residents traded gunfire with masked insurgents, killing three of them along a main thoroughfare.

In the south, officials found the corpses of six Iraqi soldiers, their hands bound and their bodies riddled with bullets.

The U.S. patrol was hit by the bomb as it crossed a bridge, hospital officials said, citing witnesses. Four civilians in a car nearby were killed, they said.

It was not immediately known whether any American troops were hurt.

Gun battles erupted in the streets of the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Doura, where militants wearing black hoods and riding in three cars opened fire on shoppers along a main street, injuring four. Shopkeepers and residents returned fire, killing three assailants.

Earlier, gunmen in the same quarter killed a policeman as he drove to work, Police Lt. Col. Hafidh Ghrayri said.

In unrelated violence, the U.S. military reported Tuesday that a Marine was killed in action Monday in Al Anbar province. At least 1,522 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The corpses of the six Iraqi soldiers were brought to the morgue in Kut, a city about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, a hospital worker said. The soldiers’ hands had been tied and their heads and torsos riddled with bullets.

Iraqi Defense Ministry officials said they had no information on the incident.

Separately, six other Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped in Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, an area known as a rebel stronghold, Ramadi Police Maj. Mohammed Dulaimi said Tuesday. Witnesses said about a dozen masked men grabbed the soldiers, who were dressed in civilian clothes, as they headed to a bus station.

In Mosul, a convoy of security officials was ambushed late Monday, sparking a gunfight that killed 17 militants, said Col. Wathiq Ali, deputy police commander.

No security forces were hurt, and 14 militants were detained, Ali said.