US troops nervous after fresh Iraq attacks

4.30pm - By ANDREW MARSHALL

BAGHDAD - A grenade attack has killed three US soldiers guarding a children's hospital in Iraq and an ambush has killed another.

Both incidents are fresh evidence that the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons have brought no respite in the guerrilla campaign against American forces.

"Things are worse now," said Staff Sergeant Kenneth Maxwell, nervously fingering the trigger of his machinegun on an armoured vehicle in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit on Saturday.

"They used to just attack us, mostly at night. But now they are attacking us during the day with AK-47s and RPGs (rocket- propelled grenades), at any American soldiers they can find," Maxwell said, eyes alert under the baking sun.

In the hospital attack in Baquba, 50 km (30 miles) north of Baghdad, residents said an attacker had hurled a grenade from the roof of the building on Saturday morning. Three soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division were killed and four wounded.

Hours later, one soldier was killed and two were wounded when their convoy was attacked near Abu Ghuraib with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and possibly an improvised explosive device, the US military said in a statement.

The soldiers were with an engineer unit attached to the 3rd Infantry Division.

That raised to 48 the number of troops killed by hostile fire since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.

Nine have died since US forces killed Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay on Tuesday in what American officials hope will prove a devastating blow to the morale of Iraqi guerrillas prowling

the "Sunni triangle" west and north of Baghdad.

But the feared brothers' bloody fate does not seem to have braked the quickening rhythm of hit-and-run assaults.

The daylight attack in Baquba prompted US troops to seal off the hospital and bar people from leaving for the rest of the day, to the dismay of worried Iraqis with relatives inside.

"My wife and my baby boy are inside. I have a one-year-old daughter at home who needs her mother. We want the Americans to let them out," said one man, Mohammed Abdul Sattar.

"We all agree that we need to fight the Americans," said Ali Abbas, whose sister is a nurse in the hospital. "But did they really have to hit them in a children's hospital?"

US officials blame Saddam loyalists for the attacks on American troops, and masked men have appeared on Arab television networks vowing revenge for the deaths of Uday and Qusay.

But many Iraqis resent the US occupation and link the violence to anger over the way US troops behave. Between 6,000 and 7,800 Iraqi civilians are believed to have been killed since the war began on March 20, though no precise toll is available.

US bulldozers began demolishing the villa in the northern city of Mosul where troops killed Uday and Qusay, along with two others thought to be a bodyguard and Qusay's teenage son.

The house belonged to a businessman with links to Saddam's family. US officials will not say if it was he who betrayed Uday and Qusay to claim US$30 million in reward money. Washington says it will pay -- and hopes others will be tempted by the US$25 million on offer to anyone who can pinpoint Saddam.

"We continue to tighten the noose," 4th Infantry Division commander Major General Ray Odierno said.

- REUTERS

Photos: The bodies

Herald Feature: Iraq