The U.S. military in Iraq says two U.S. soldiers were killed and one wounded on Saturday, after attackers opened fire on their convoy near the border with Syria. The military says the U.S. soldiers were ambushed near the border town of Husaybah in western Iraq. They were traveling in a military convoy when attackers opened fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
The guerrilla-style attack was one of three deadly roadside ambushes on Saturday. Thirty kilometers south of Baghdad, a convoy carrying Spanish intelligence agents came under fire, killing seven people. A short time later, two Japanese diplomats were ambushed and killed near the town of Tikrit in the violent "Sunni Triangle" area of central Iraq.
Earlier in the day, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, told reporters that daily attacks on coalition forces in Iraq had decreased by one-third in the past two weeks.
Despite the decline, November saw some of the bloodiest attacks on American troops since the U.S. led March invasion to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. At least 77 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire this month.