US soldier killed; two Iraqi women shot dead

A US soldier was killed and two wounded in a bomb attack outside of Baquba, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Baghdad, a US military officer said Thursday.
"One soldier has died and two have been wounded as a result of an IED attack near Baquba on Wednesday," the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A convoy was hit by a roadside bomb west of Baquba and three soldiers were injured, with one of them dying later in hospital, he said.
It was the second such fatal explosion in that area in 24 hours.
A US soldier was killed on Tuesday in the region on the eastern edge of the so-called Sunni triangle, where insurgents with sympathies for jailed dictator Saddam Hussein have used home-made explosive devices to target US forces.
Added to an official Pentagon tally, the pair of deaths since Tuesday raises to 266 the number of US soldiers killed in action since US President George W. Bush declared official hostilities over on May 1.
WOMEN SHOT DEAD: Assailants shot dead two Iraqi women working for a US contractor and Iraqi police identified on Thursday the men arrested for the murder of two US nationals as police officers.
The string of killings seemed to fall within a violent campaign directed against people linked to the US project of installing a pro-Western and democratic government in Iraq after years of dictatorship under Saddam Hussein.
The US-led coalition also announced that an autopsy performed on detained Palestinian militant Abu Abbas, the brains behind the 1985 hijacking of an Italian cruise ship, confirmed he died of heart disease on Monday.
Police in the Shia Muslim holy city of Karbala confirmed Thursday that six men arrested in connection to the killing of two US government employees and their interpreter were police officers.
Two Iraqi women employed by a unit of US oilfield services company Halliburton were shot dead late Wednesday in the southern port city of Basra as they returned home from work.
EX-GENERAL CAPTURED: An ex-general of the Republican Guard, Rashid Hamid Abdullah Bayati of Saddam Hussein's elite army, accused of masterminding anti-US attacks was captured and one of his followers killed Thursday in northern Iraq, police said.