U.S. soldier killed in ambush as hunt for insurgents continues

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Guerrillas ambushed a U.S. military patrol with small arms fire, killing one soldier, the military said Thursday, and suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists killed a representative of a major Shiite political party.

In Tokyo on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi approved a plan to send 1,000 troops on a humanitarian mission to southern Iraq, the defense chief said. The schedule of the deployment was not released.

It will be Japan's first troop dispatch to a combat zone since World War II.

The U.S. soldier was killed Wednesday night when the 1st Armored Division patrol came under fire in al-Karmah, in northwest Baghdad, the military said. Another American was injured, as was an Iraqi interpreter.

The soldier's death brings the number of U.S. soldiers killed in combat to 314 since the war started on March 20, including 199 since President Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1. Some 144 soldiers have died of non-hostile causes, according to the Pentagon.

It was the first fatal ambush of a U.S. soldier since Saddam's capture on Saturday.

North of the capital, U.S. forces encircled the town of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, as part of a major raid on the area. Troops smashed down the gates of homes and the doors of workshops and junkyards there Wednesday in an effort to quash the violence that has persisted since Saddam was captured.

In Baghdad, suspected followers of Saddam shot to death Muhannad al-Hakim, a representative of a major Shiite party and a member of a prominent political family, a party official said Thursday.

Al-Hakim, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was killed Wednesday while leaving his home, party official Latif al-Rubaie said.

Al-Hakim, in his mid-30s, was head of security at the Education Ministry and was a cousin of Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

A funeral was held Thursday.

In August, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a top Shiite cleric and founder of the Supreme Council party, was killed in a car bombing in the southern city of Najaf that left at least 85 people dead. He was a brother of Abdel-Aziz Al-Hakim.

Several attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqi police in recent days have claimed more than a dozen lives in Baghdad and in predominantly Sunni areas west and north of the capital, once Saddam's power base.