Insurgents killed three Iraqis and two coalition soldiers — one American and one British — in the hours before Saddam Hussein's trial began on Wednesday. A bomb also went off at a famous monument in a Baghdad square honoring the 8th-century founder of Baghdad to whom Saddam had often compared himself. The blast, which toppled the bust of Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour but caused no injuries, appeared to be a jab at the former dictator.The bombing of the famous monument honoring Al-Mansour knocked his bust off the top of a 30-foot-tall triangular monument, said police Capt. Qassim Hussein. The attack occurred at 1:30 a.m. in a northwestern area named after Al-Mansour, a caliph, or supreme religious leader, of the Islamic empire who built Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris River in 762 A.D. During his dictatorial rule from 1979 to 2003, Saddam often tried to compare himself and his accomplishments to those of Baghdad's founder. But Hussein said it was not immediately known who had launched the attack or what motivated it.
Shortly before Saddam's trial was to begin in Baghdad's highly secured Green Zone, suspected insurgents shot and killed Hakim Mirza, one of several municipal directors of the capital, and his driver, in the southern neighborhood of Dora, said police Maj. Falah Al-Mohamadawi. Gunmen also killed a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi army that U.S. forces disbanded after invading Iraq in 2003.
In other violence in Iraq, a roadside bomb hit a U.S. Army patrol late Tuesday night, killing one soldier and wounding two near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, the military said. The attack raised to at least 1,981 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count. A British soldier also was killed by a roadside bomb late Tuesday night in the southern region of Basra where most British forces are based, Britain's Ministry of Defense said.