Bomb kills five in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Four American soldiers and an interpreter were killed Monday in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city Mosul, the deadliest attack on U.S. troops in Iraq since May.

The military said three service members were killed shortly after a person in a vehicle set off explosives. The fourth soldier and the interpreter working with the unit died later from wounds suffered in the blast, according to the military.

An Iraqi official in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, said a person driving a pickup truck loaded with explosives rammed into a U.S. armored vehicle at approximately 11 a.m. in the city’s Jadid district.

The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the attack also wounded two Iraqi policemen and a civilian.

Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, remains among the country’s most dangerous. Although attacks in Nineveh province have decreased substantially, al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups remain active in Mosul and some outlying areas.

The attack comes a week after provincial elections in the province took place peacefully despite fears that they would incite violence.

Brig. Gen. Robert Brown, the top U.S. commander in Mosul, said recently that the insurgency in Nineveh has lost the widespread tacit support it had just a year ago.

“I would describe al-Qaida in Iraq as a dying snake,” the general told reporters in Mosul. “They still have a punch but not like they had before.”

He said the number of attacks in the province has dropped to single-digit levels in recent weeks, up from a high of more than 50 a day in 2004.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said they planned to launch what would be the fourth crackdown in less than a year in the weeks after the Jan. 31 provincial election, during which Sunni Arabs gained control of the province from Kurds.