By DPA
Baghdad : Three US soldiers were killed when a bomb struck their vehicle in northwestern Baghdad while elsewhere eight Iraqi soldiers were killed while trying to detonate rockets, the US and Iraqi military said here Wednesday.
Tuesday’s attack brings the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq in February to 22 and the total number killed since the 2003 US-led war on Iraq to 3,966.
The casualty figures among US military personnel have significantly decreased in the last three months, which is mostly due to large-scale offensives launched by Iraqi and US troops in Baghdad and restive areas in other provinces.
In Ubaydi, east of Baghdad, eight Iraqi soldiers and policemen were killed and 42 people injured Tuesday evening when a lorry-load of rockets exploded while they were trying to detonate them, the Voices of Iraq VOI news agency.
The anti-explosive experts had already dismantled three rockets before the rest exploded, Iraqi security officials told VOI.
The wounded were taken to hospitals in the Shia-dominated Sadr city nearby.
Earlier Tuesday, eight Katyusha rockets fell almost simultaneously on the US army base in Ubaydi and its base in Rustimiyah, southeast of Baghdad, the Iraqi interior ministry said.
Reports on casualties, if any, were not available.