Bombs kill two U.S. soldiers in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two American soldiers were killed in bomb blasts Friday, bringing the U.S. death toll in Iraq this week to 10 — violence serving as a reminder that insurgents remain defiant despite the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Rebel gunmen also killed a Sunni Muslim tribal leader, a coalition supporter, near a mosque in the northern town of Mosul. Anti-U.S. guerrillas have targeted Iraqi police and other officials who cooperate with the U.S.-led occupation authorities.

One American soldier died Friday as he tried to defuse a bomb in Baqouba, 30 miles north of Baghdad, in an area serving as a power base for Hussein loyalists.

Capt. Jefferson Wolfe of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division said the bomb exploded as the soldier worked on it. Such explosives are a favored weapon of rebels, who leave them on roadsides and detonate them as military convoys pass.

The guerrillas used that tactic Friday near Balad, north of Baghdad, setting off a bomb that killed a second soldier, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.

Also Friday, three soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division were wounded in an ambush in Mosul when their convoy came under small arms fire, said Maj. Trey Cate, the division spokesman.

The soldiers were searching the city’s streets for bombs, Cate said. The soldiers returned fire but did not catch their attackers, Cate said. Witnesses said a taxi driver was killed in the firefight.

Meanwhile, other Iraqis continued to show hatred for Hussein, who was captured about two weeks ago, as hundreds stoned a bronze bust of the former dictator in Baghdad’s al-Sadr slum. Previously called Saddam City, it is home to about 2 million of Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslim sect who had been cruelly repressed during Hussein’s regime.

"Iraqis want to show their rejection and contempt of Saddam … Today, Saddam was tried and punished symbolically," Shiekh Qassim Ahmed said at the scene.