BAGHDAD: Three Americans have been killed in fighting in the former Al-Qaeda stronghold of Anbar province in western Iraq, the US military said in a statement on Friday. "Two marines and one sailor were killed while conducting combat operations against enemy forces here April 30," it said. No further details were provided.Anbar was once a bastion of the anti-US insurgency movement until Sunni rebels allied with the American forces in late 2006 and helped to drive Al-Qaeda out of the vast desert province. The armed groups commonly referred to as Sahwa or Awakening, are made up of former insurgents and have played a key role in dramatically reducing violence across the country.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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