Roadside bombs killed a U.S. soldier and three Iraqi National Guard troops Monday and officials said insurgents blew up an oil pipeline near Kirkuk and killed two senior police officers in Baghdad. Political leaders, meanwhile, sized up their positions in a new government.One American soldier was killed and three wounded Monday when a bomb detonated near their patrol in northern Iraq, the military said. The explosion occurred when the soldiers from Task Force Liberty were on a combat patrol near the town of Baqouba, 55 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. command said in a statement. The three Iraqi troops were killed by a bomb that detonated in Baqouba as their convoy passed, said Mudafar Al-Juburi of the Dyala police station. Three other soldiers were wounded, he added.
Insurgents near Kirkuk attacked the Al-Dibbis oilfield belonging to the North Oil Co., said Maj.-Gen. Anwar Mohammad Amin. The pipeline supplied oil for domestic use and the damage will hamper production, he said. It will take workers at least three days to extinguish the blaze and repair the pipeline, Amin said. Insurgents have regularly targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.