IRAQ: A US soldier in Iraq died yesterday after he was shot at Baghdad University in the latest in a string of increasingly bold attacks on occupying forces.
Washington was also grappling with anger from Turkey after detaining troops belonging to its NATO ally in northern Iraq.
Diplomats said there was evidence they were plotting to kill a Kurdish governor but Turkey has rejected the charge. Turkey said yesterday it expected the soldiers to be released shortly, after the Prime Minister, Mr Tayyip Erdogan, received assurances from the US Vice President, Mr Dick Cheney, by phone.
The dispute threatened to undermine efforts to improve ties between the allies after relations soured following Turkey's refusal to allow US troops to stage attacks on neighbouring Iraq from Turkish soil during the war.
The US military said the victim of yesterday's shooting in Iraq was one of its Civil Affairs soldiers, who wear regular combat gear but specialise in helping with community projects.
Students said he had been inside the university campus in the south of the city and that a US military helicopter had taken him to hospital. US troops sealed off the campus.
One student, Abdullah Saad, said he saw the soldier on the ground, bleeding from a head wound. He received a "hostile" gunshot wound and died later of his injuries, the military said.
On Saturday a British freelance cameraman, Richard Wild, was also shot dead at close range in central Baghdad and seven recruits to a US-backed local police force were killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Ramadi, west of the capital.
US and British troops have come under attack almost daily since toppling Saddam Hussein and his Baath party government on April 9th. Commanders say the frequency of the violence has remained fairly constant but that it has become deadlier.
Twenty-seven US and six British soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1st. Many more have been wounded.
The chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican senator Mr Pat Roberts, told CNN yesterday: "We have to kill or capture Saddam and his two sons. It is a big-ticket item for us if we're going to eliminate the fear and be successful over the next 100 days with all the attacks against Americans."
Most violence against US forces has taken place in Baghdad and Sunni Muslim areas north and west of the capital which were strongholds of support for Saddam, himself a Sunni. However the detention of Turkish soldiers underscored that the Kurdish-dominated north also remains volatile.
Turkey says 11 soldiers were among 24 people detained in northern Iraq on Friday and taken to Baghdad. The US military has said several soldiers thought to be Turks were in custody after a raid in northern Iraq.
A few thousand Turkish soldiers are inside northern Iraq in pursuit of Turkish Kurdish guerrillas who waged a separatist campaign in the 1980s and 1990s in south-eastern Turkey.