Sniper lures troops into booby trapped house

AP/Union-Tribune:

A sniper shot and killed a U.S. soldier, then lured his comrades to a booby-trapped house where four more troops were killed in a complex attack believed to have been the work of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a U.S. general said Sunday.

U.S. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands the volatile southern rim of Baghdad and districts to the south, said the use of rigged houses was a new tactic against American forces trying to root out bomb networks in the rural insurgent strongholds.

The soldiers entered the house Saturday in search of the sniper who had killed one of their comrades minutes earlier. One soldier stepped on a pressure-triggered bomb. He and three others were killed and four wounded, Lynch told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

All the soldiers were assigned to Task Force Marne, which works in Lynch's area of operations – a volatile mix of Sunni and Shiite extremists.

The huge blast occurred in the Arab Jubour district southeast of the capital. In early June, the military began clearing the district of suspected al-Qaeda militants who were using it to build car bombs and launch rockets at American bases and Shiite Muslim neighborhoods.

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Lynch said the attack on Saturday bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which had operated freely in the area before the U.S. ground operation began.

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There is a much safer way to clear houses of snipers. Fire fuel air explosives into the structure and kill everyone in it. The problems with tactical tricks like the one used by al Qaeda is that when dealing with an intelligent and thinking organization like the US military, there si a pretty quick response time on reacting to the ruse.