U.S. Soldier, 25 Insurgents Killed in Mosul Battle

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http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7206479

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - A frontal assault on U.S. troops by dozens of Iraqi insurgents in Mosul left an American soldier and about 25 guerrillas dead in one of the boldest attacks yet on occupying forces in Iraq.

Battle raged late on Wednesday as President Bush said his forces would do all they could to make it possible to hold next month's election in Mosul and other violent cities. But many residents of Mosul say they are too afraid to vote.

The soldier died of wounds, the military said on Thursday.

He had been on a patrol that was hit by a suicide car bomb close to a U.S. outpost. Gunmen tried to overrun the area, sending in another suicide truck bomber and firing mortars and rockets in an apparent bid to wipe out an entire U.S. unit.

About 15 U.S. troops were wounded before jets screamed in low over the rooftops to bomb the attackers and force them to break off, leaving about 25 insurgents dead, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings said.

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MSNBC reporter was on from Baghdad earlier and said the football type scoring we are seeing now will become the norm. He said when the military was reporting several thousand Iraqis killed per day as they had been doing, someone realized that the total number of Iraqis killed was getting close to exceeding the population of Iraq so they have stopped doing that.