Five soldiers were killed in Iraq on Monday, making it the deadliest attack since the combat mission ended nine months ago. According to New York Times, multiple rockets struck a U.S. base, that served as an advisory center for the Iraqi police southeast of Baghdad.
Militants have continued to attack American bases and convoys with mortars, rockets and improvised roadside bombs in the waning months of the United States military’s time here, although American casualties have dropped sharply in the last few years. Two American troops died last month, and 11 died in April, according to a tally kept by icasualties.org.
All of the 46,000 American forces still in Iraq are scheduled to withdraw by the end of the year, but Iraqi leaders are debating whether to ask some troops to stay behind to help train Iraqi soldiers and help Iraq secure its borders and airspace.
The attacks against the Americans were part of a bloody day across Iraq.
Elsewhere, gunmen and suicide bombers struck at Iraqi security forces and militias in three heavily Sunni Muslim areas, killing at least 21 people in attacks that challenged the government’s attempts to demonstrate gains in security.
In the worst of the attacks, a suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives at the main gates of the governmental headquarters in Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein. Security officials said 12 people were killed, nine of them Iraqi soldiers.
It was the second major attack in Tikrit in just three days. On Friday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in the center of a mosque filled with worshippers, and hours later, a second suicide bomber attacked the hospital treating the wounded. Nineteen people were killed, including several local officials.
The head of national security in the province, Brig. Gen. Jasim al-Jabara, resigned after Monday’s attack, saying that security in his section of central Iraq had deteriorated sharply. He blamed other security agencies for failing to act on intelligence.
“We are giving some good information to the security forces in the province, but they are doing nothing,” General Jabara said.
In western Iraq, several miles west of Fallujah, militants aiming to kill a local police chief set off four improvised bombs at his home, killing his father, mother, sister and one of his children. The police chief survived.
