The violence raises major doubts over Iraqi security capabilities ahead of a year-end deadline for the US pullout, with Washington pressing Baghdad to decide soon whether or not it wants an extended American military presence.
"Five US service members were killed Monday in central Iraq," said a brief US army statement. The names and details of the deceased are being withheld until next of kin can be informed, it added.
Captain Dan Churchill, a US military spokesman contacted by AFP, declined to give details on how or where the soldiers died.
An Iraqi interior ministry official and an Iraqi police officer, however, said five rockets struck the sprawling American Camp Victory base on Baghdad`s outskirts at dawn.
The Iraqi officials both said the bodies of two apparent insurgents were found outside the American base, badly burned from two rockets having exploded inside their vehicle.
The deaths were the most of American service personnel in a single day since May 11, 2009, when a US soldier was arrested and charged for having opened fire on five of his comrades on a base just outside Baghdad.
They bring to 4,459 the number of American soldiers to have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, according to an AFP tally based on data compiled by independent website www.icasualties.org.
The remaining 45,000-odd US forces here are primarily charged with training and equipping their Iraqi counterparts, though they still take part in joint counter-terror operations.
Their bases also still come under regular rocket attack from insurgents.
Also on Monday, violence in Baghdad and central Iraq killed 20 people, including 12 struck by a car bomb driven by a suicide attacker in Saddam Hussein`s home town of Tikrit, officials said. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
