Two U.S. soldiers killed in Iraqi ambush

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Guerrillas killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded a third in an ambush in western Iraq, a military statement said Sunday. A day earlier, seven Spanish intelligence agents and two Japanese diplomats died in separate attacks near Baghdad.\nWith the latest deaths, guerrillas have killed 106 coalition troops in Iraq in November, with 79 American soldiers slain along with 25 other allied soldiers. It has been the bloodiest month of the war that began March 20.\nA military statement said the U.S. troops were killed when a task force from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was hit Saturday by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic fire east of the border town of Husaybah, 180 miles northwest of Baghdad.\nIn Mahmudiyah, 18 miles south of Baghdad, assailants ambushed a team of Spanish military intelligence officers Saturday, killing seven agents. One Spaniard escaped the assault.\nTelevision footage of the aftermath of the ambush showed several bodies along a highway as cars, their headlights on, drove by at dusk. People milled around, and a young man -- apparently aware he was being filmed -- kicked his foot in the air over a body. Another rested his foot on a corpse, an arm raised in triumph.\n"We sacrifice our souls and blood for you, oh Saddam," some in the group chanted in Arabic, witnesses said.\nOn Sunday, witnesses at the scene, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, said the Spaniards had been traveling in a pair of sport utility vehicles when men in a car behind them opened fire. One of the SUVs careered off the road into a ditch.\nThe occupants fled the car and were shot at the roadside, perhaps by a second group of attackers involved in the ambush. On Sunday, the charred remains of the car could be seen in a watery ditch at the side of the road, with a group of villagers scavenging its parts.\nWitnesses said the four men in the second car were also killed at the side of the road nearby, apparently by a grenade. Blood could be seen on bushes nearby, and a broken pair of glasses lay on the road.\n"All of them are Jews," said 15-year-old Tareq Jassim, a villager at the scene Sunday. "All of them are occupiers."\nThe two Japanese diplomats were killed by unidentified gunmen Saturday as they stopped to buy food and drinks at a stand outside the village of Mukayshifa on the road between Baghdad and Tikrit, Lt. Col. William MacDonald said Sunday.\nThe diplomats, on their way to attend a reconstruction conference, were not traveling with a military escort, MacDonald said.\nThe attacks on U.S. allies appear to be part of an effort to undercut the coalition. Insurgents also have targeted Iraqis seen as collaborating with the occupation authorities, such as police and local officials.\nThe latest killings came more than two weeks after 19 Italians were killed in a car bomb attack in Nasiriyah.\nIn Tokyo, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said there would be no change to Japan's plans to dispatch troops to support the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq. The deaths were the first of Japanese in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.\nSpokesmen for Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar also affirmed that the attack wouldn't cause Spain to end its presence in Iraq.\nPresident Bush called Aznar "to express his sympathies on behalf of the American people," White House spokesman Allen Abney said.\nSpain was one of the firmest supporters of the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein and sent 1,300 soldiers to help maintain order. A Spanish diplomat attached to Spain's intelligence agency was assassinated near his residence in Baghdad on Oct. 9, and a Spanish navy captain was killed in the truck bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19.\nDespite the spate of killings this month, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said the overall number of guerrilla attacks on coalition forces was falling off.\nLt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said Saturday that attacks on U.S.-led forces have dropped some 30 percent in the past two weeks, from a daily average of 35 to 22. On the worst days earlier this month, there were as many as 50 attacks a day, Sanchez told reporters at a news conference in Baghdad.\nSanchez said the United States suspects operatives of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network have taken part in many of the attacks on coalition and civilian targets in Iraq, but still has no conclusive evidence of its involvement.\nHe acknowledged the difficulty of establishing a firm connection with al Qaeda amid the chaos.\n"We still haven't conclusively established an al Qaeda operative in this country," the general said.