Three more Iraqi soldiers killed near Mosul (Roundup)

Mar 12, 2009, 16:16 GMT

Mosul, Iraq - Three Iraqi soldiers were killed by two roadside bombs as they patrolled areas around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, police said.

The soldiers became the latest casualties in the government's attempt to pacify the area, which remains among Iraq's most dangerous.

Early Thursday evening, a soldier on patrol near Mosul's College of Dentistry was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated near his patrol. A second soldier was wounded in that attack, a source in Mosul's police department told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

And on Thursday afternoon, two soldiers on patrol in the al-Baj district roughly 60 kilometres west of Mosul were killed by a roadside bomb.

Police said they had arrested an additional eight suspected insurgents from the al-Zinjili district west of Mosul on Thursday.

On February 20, Iraqi security forces launched 'Operation New Hope' in an attempt to arrest insurgents concentrated on Mosul's left bank. The push has netted more than 100 suspected insurgents, but has also drawn a series of retaliatory attacks.

Three Iraqi soldiers died when a roadside bomb exploded near an army patrol on Wednesday. That bomb followed twin bombings near the city on Tuesday.

In eastern Mosul on Tuesday, the son of a Christian politician escaped a car bomb intended for him, but a Christian doctor who had been nearby was killed by the blast.

That attack revived memories of those between last September and November when dozens of Christians in the northern city were murdered, in a string of attacks that Christians at the time said they believed were intended to scare them out of the area.

Another bomb, also in eastern Mosul, struck a police patrol on Tuesday, injuring six civilians, but killing no police officers.