By Xinhua,
Baghdad : A roadside bomb went off near the city of Mosul, the capital of northern Iraq’s Nineveh province, killing four contractors and wounding eight others, the U.S. military said Tuesday.
The attack took place at about 3:30 p.m. (1230 GMT) on Monday, when the bomb struck a convoy carrying contractors in an area located 23 km south of Mosul, a military statement said.
According to a spokesman of the U.S. forces based in Iraq, nationalities of the victims had not been released, pending notification of next of kin.
The contractors help transport much of the food and other supplies needed by U.S. military in Iraq. At the height of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq, gunmen often targeted such convoys.
Nineveh province, some 400 km north of Baghdad, was said to be one of the last strongholds of al-Qaida fighters in the war-torn country, where a major security crackdown carried out by the U.S. and Iraqi security forces to uproot al-Qaida militants and other anti-U.S. insurgent groups.