Six US, four British troops killed in Iraq

Six American and four British troops were killed in attacks across Iraq, coalition forces announced on Thursday, as a US helicopter crashed south of Baghdad and insurgents ambushed Iraqi soldiers.
The bloody 24 hours for foreign troops and the local army the Americans and British are trying to train, came with preparations underway for Iraqi security troops to take control of the fourth province in the Shiia south.
The British soldiers and a civilian interpreter in the same vehicle were killed outside the southern city of Basra in a complex attack involving a roadside bomb, small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Another soldier was seriously wounded in what was the deadliest attack against British forces based in Iraq since November, when four servicemen were killed in a bomb attack on their boat patrol in the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
"It is with deep regret that we can confirm that four British soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in a roadside bomb attack against a Warrior patrol west of Basra this morning," said the Ministry of Defence in London.
West of Basra, the unit was hit by a roadside bomb, followed up with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, he told AFP by telephone from the British headquarters in southern Iraq.
"During that (roadside bomb) attack the five people were killed, all of whom were in the same vehicle. A further soldier who was in the vehicle is very seriously wounded," he said.
In Baghdad, the US military also announced that six soldiers had been killed over the past two days as the rising body count increases domestic American pressure for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq.
Four soldiers were killed on Wednesday by roadside bombs in southern Baghdad and north of the capital, and two more troops were shot dead by insurgents in eastern parts of the capital on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, four personnel on board a US army helicopter were wounded and evacuated when it crashed south of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed an Iraqi journalist in a bomb attack. The bomber blew up a dump truck outside the office of Baghdad Television, a 24-hour channel owned by the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, killing the network's deputy bureau chief Thaer Ahmed Jabr and wounding 12 other employees.
Police also found the body of an Iraqi woman journalist, Khamael Muhsin, who was a prominent television newsreader during the time of Saddam Hussein and whom had been kidnapped one day earlier, a media rights group said.