American soldier among 8 killed in Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-26 15:10

Bombings struck four coalition and Iraqi military convoys and a provincial government office Monday, killing at least eight people, including an American soldier and an Estonian trooper in the Baghdad area.

Coming a day after the bodies of nearly 50 massacred Iraqi military recruits were found, the bombings occurred as a U.N. agency confirmed that several hundred tons of explosives were missing from a former Iraqi military depot in an insurgent hot spot south of Baghdad.

On Monday, a roadside bomb in western Baghdad killed one U.S. soldier and wounded five, the U.S. military said. The American's death brings to 1,106 the number of the U.S. military personnel who have been killed since the beginning of the war in March 2003. At least 845 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include three military civilians.

A car bomb also targeted an Australian military convoy 350 yards from the Australian Embassy in Baghdad, killing three Iraqi civilians and wounding nine people, including three Australian soldiers who suffered minor injuries, Iraqi and coalition officials said.

In near-simultaneous attacks Monday in the northern city of Mosul, suicide car bombers struck provincial government offices and a military convoy, the U.S. military said. Three government employees were killed and one injured at the offices and an Iraqi general was slightly injured in the attack on the convoy, a government spokesman said.

Insurgent attacks across Iraq have increased 25 percent since the holy month of Ramadan began two weeks ago. Attacks on U.S. and coalition forces averaged 56 a day last month -- down from a high of 87 in August.

On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that 377 tons of conventional explosives suitable for car bomb attacks had vanished from a former Iraqi military installation about 30 miles south of the capital.

The Vienna-based IAEA said it had been informed on Oct. 10 by Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology that the explosives were missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility near Youssifiyah, an area rife ambush attacks.

In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan sought to minimize the disappearance of the explosives cache. "The first priority, from our standpoint, was to make sure that this wasn't a nuclear-proliferation risk, which it is not," he said. "These are conventional high explosives that we are talking about."

Attributing the explosives' disappearance to looting that occurred in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion, McClellan said munitions "were literally spread throughout the country." Guarding the ammunition and weapon sites, he said, competed with protecting oil pipelines, expediting reconstruction, securing Iraqi government ministries and other high priorities.

The killing of 49 unarmed Iraqi cadets headed home on leave suggests Iraqi insurgents have infiltrated Iraq's security forces deeply enough to gain intelligence and make precision strikes of their own.

Although U.S. officials say it's too early to tell whether the cadets were set up, some American officers have long regarded Iraq's security forces as susceptible to infiltration.

Meanwhile, Pentagon and congressional officials said Monday that the Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year.

White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized that final decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be made until shortly before the request is sent to Congress. That may not happen until early February, when the president Bush submits his budget for fiscal 2006.

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