BAGHDAD: Attacks killed five American soldiers and 16 Iraqis on Monday, the deadliest day for US forces in Iraq in more than two years, just months before all of them must withdraw. The latest violence raises key questions over the capabilities of Iraqi security forces ahead of a year-end deadline for Washington to pull out, with US officials pressing their counterparts in Baghdad to decide soon whether or not they want an extended American military presence. “Five US service members were killed Monday in central Iraq,” said a brief US army statement. Captain Dan Churchill, a US military spokesman, declined to give details on how or where the soldiers died. An Iraqi interior ministry official and an Iraqi police officer, however, said five rockets struck the sprawling American Camp Victory base on Baghdad's outskirts. The Iraqi officials both said the bodies of two apparent insurgents were found outside the American base, badly burned from two rockets having exploded inside their vehicle. The deaths were the most of American service personnel in a single day since May 11, 2009, when a US soldier was arrested and charged for having opened fire on five of his comrades on a base just outside Baghdad. They bring to 4,459 the number of American soldiers to have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003. Also on Monday, violence in Baghdad and central Iraq killed 16 people, including 12 struck by a car bomb driven by a suicide attacker in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, officials said. The fatalities in Tikrit included military intelligence Colonel Nuri Sabah Al-Mashhadani and two other officers, while 20 other people were wounded, according to a police captain and an army captain, both speaking on condition of anonymity. Nine soldiers were among the dead, including the three officers. The explosion struck at 9:30 A.M., targeting the main gate of a fortified compound housing several of Saddam's presidential palaces, which is home to security offices. – Agence France
