Female soldier in Iraq killed by roadside bomb

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said Saturday that a female soldier died Thursday in a roadside bomb attack on her patrol south of Baghdad, the 90th American servicewoman killed since the invasion.

Servicewomen are not assigned to offensive combat missions in Iraq, but they often participate in raids, patrols and other active duty in a variety of roles, such as flying helicopters or dealing with Iraqi women during U.S. operations.

Because of that, fatalities among servicewomen have been relatively rare, constituting fewer than 3% of military deaths among the U.S.-led coalition forces, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks fatalities in the Iraq war.

Still, women have seen more combat during the Iraq war than in any previous U.S. engagement, and the causes of death are largely the same as those of their male counterparts, including roadside bombs, mortar attacks, suicide bombings and the downing of helicopters.

The soldier killed Thursday was identified as 2nd Lt. Tracy Alger, 30, of New Auburn, Wis., according to an Associated Press report quoting the soldier’s mother. U.S. officials did not confirm the name of the soldier Saturday.

On Oct. 5, Army Reserve Spc. Rachael L. Hugo, 24, of Madison, Wis., died in Baiji, 125 miles north of Baghdad, when insurgents attacked her unit with a roadside bomb and small-arms fire.

The most recent death of a woman in a hostile fire incident was that of Army Staff Sgt. Lillian Clamens, 35, of Lawton, Okla., who was killed Oct. 10 in a rocket attack on Camp Victory, the main U.S. military base in Iraq. Clamens, an administrative clerk, had three children and died two days before she was scheduled to return home.

Also Saturday, the U.S. said five terrorism suspects believed to have ties to the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq were killed in an airstrike on a suspected hide-out south of Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Officials said they had detained 10 others in three operations Friday night and Saturday in northern and central Iraq.

The U.S. also announced that Iraqi forces captured two terrorism suspects Saturday in one of Sunni Islam’s holiest mosques, Abu Hanifa in the Adhamiya area of east Baghdad. The two were suspected of involvement in roadside bombings, kidnappings, slayings and attacks on Iraqi and U.S. security forces throughout Baghdad. They were believed to be using the mosque as a base of operations. Ten others were detained.

On the floor of Iraq’s parliament Saturday, lawmaker Jalaluddin Saghir accused Iraqi soldiers of killing two teenagers while participating with U.S. forces in raids in northwest Baghdad, and said a third was killed in a later raid. A spokesman for the U.S. military said he had no immediate record of the incidents.

A delegation of Kurdish politicians announced what they said was a successful visit in Najaf with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, in a bid to marshal broader support for northern Iraq’s Kurdish region and opposition to Turkish incursions to fight guerrillas there.

“We got what we came for,” said Adnan Mufti, speaker of the Kurdish parliament. “Mr. Sistani stressed that the military solution is not good, and we have to achieve the common interests.”

In Baghdad, police said a series of bombings and shootings killed two and wounded 12, including three Iraqi policemen. Gunmen attacked a minibus of Shiite pilgrims visiting a shrine in Kadhimiya, wounding three, and a car bomb exploded in the parking lot of a Mansour supermarket whose name translates to “Mr. Milk.”

Mansour, once an upscale shopping district on Baghdad’s west side, was devastated by fighting over the last few years but has begun to recover, as have many of the capital’s neighborhoods. Mr. Milk had been bombed at least once before.

Gunmen killed an Iraqi police officer and wounded two others near Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad. In Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, roadside bomb and gunfire attacks left two Iraqi police officers dead and three injured Friday night and Saturday, police said. Suspected assailants in one of the cases were arrested.

A roadside bombing targeted the convoy of the Basra police commander Saturday morning, wounding two guards.

christian.berthelsen @latimes.com

--

Times staff writers Wail Alhafith, Raheem Salman and Saif Rasheed in Baghdad and special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf contributed to this report.