Bomber kills 5 U.S. soldiers in Iraq

By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up among U.S. soldiers in central Baghdad on Monday, killing five and wounding three in the worst single attack on U.S. forces in the Iraqi capital in nearly a year.

The U.S. military said in a statement that the blast, which also wounded an Iraqi interpreter, hit the soldiers while they were on foot patrol. Iraqi police said at least nine Iraqis were wounded.

The military blamed the attack on a suicide bomber. Police, citing witnesses, said the soldiers had been walking in the upscale Mansour district when a man wearing a vest packed with explosives walked up to them and blew himself up.

The attack was a reminder that while violence is sharply down in the capital since thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers set up patrol bases in neighbourhoods to curb sectarian violence, the city is still far from safe.

Nearly 70 people were killed in a double bombing in Baghdad's central Karrada district last Thursday in an attack that the U.S. military blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

"We remain resolute in our resolve to protect the people of Iraq and kill or capture those who would bring them harm," Colonel Allen Batschelet, chief of staff of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said in a statement after Monday's attack.

The statement said four soldiers were killed in the blast and one died later of wounds.

A police official at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital said nine wounded Iraqis had been admitted, including a policeman. "They said a suicide bomber, a man, blew himself up among American soldiers," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.