24 Iraqis, 2 US soldiers killed in attacks in Tel-Afer

The American army on Wednesday announced the killing of two of its soldiers and injuring another in two separate incidents in the south and west of Iraq.

One American military statement said that one of the two soldiers was killed and his colleague was injured in a bomb explosion targeting their vehicle in Saffoun city on the border with Kuwait, while one Marine soldier was killed by fires described as not enemy related, near Falluja west of Iraq.

Meantime, seven Iraqis were killed and other 37 injured in a suicide attack carried out by a woman in a center for recruiting the Iraqi army in Tel-Afer near the Syrian borders.

Police sources explained that the woman who was wearing an explosive belt under her clothes sneaked into the groups of the volunteers who were waiting outside the recruitment center in Hassan Kawi quarters in the center of the city and detonated herself.

This attack is considered a qualitative development in the attacks of the gunmen. It is, however, the first time in which a woman carried out a suicide operation. Earlier one woman tried to carry out an attack inside one of the governmental buildings in Baghdad in October 2003, but the American forces foiled this attack.

Several days before the fall of Baghdad in the hands of the American forces in April 2003, two women detonated themselves in a car they were inside, near one American check point in Haditha city, in al-Anbar governorate, and this resulted in killing three American soldiers.

Wednesday's operation in Tel-Afer is considered the first since the American and Iraqi forces completed a military operation in the activity ten days ago under the pretext of exterminating the gunmen resulted, according to American and Iraqi official sources, in killing 300 gunmen and detention of other 700.