US: American soldier kills fellow troops

Five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in a shooting at an American base in Baghdad, the U.S. command said.

A brief U.S. statement said the shooting occurred about 2 p.m. at Camp Liberty near Baghdad International Airport but gave no further details on the attack.

The identity of the attackers, or how they got into the base was not immediately clear, and U.S. and Iraqi officials could not be reached for comment. There have been several incidents recently when gunmen dressed as Iraqi soldiers have opened fire on American troops, including an attack in the northern city of Mosul on May 2 when two soldiers and the gunman were killed.

The toll from the Monday shooting was the highest for U.S. personnel in a single attack since April 10, when a suicide truck driver killed five American soldiers with a blast near a police headquarters in Mosul. The U.S. death toll in April was 19, the highest in seven months, amid an upsurge of violence in Iraq.

Separately, the military announced Monday that a U.S. soldier was also killed a day earlier when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in Basra province of southern Baghdad.

Also Monday, a senior Iraqi traffic officer was assassinated Monday morning on his way to work in Baghdad. It was the second attack on a high-ranking traffic police officer in the capital in as many days.

A car cut off Brig. Gen. Abdul-Hussein al-Kadhoumi as he drove through a central square in the capital and a second vehicle pulled up alongside and riddled him with bullets, police said, citing witnesses. Al-Kadhoumi was director of operations for the traffic authority.

The gunmen were armed with pistols equipped with silencers, the police added on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Incidents involving gunmen armed with sophisticated weapons, including silencers, have been on the rise since a string of high-profile robberies in April.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)