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IRAQ: MISSING U.S. SOLDIERS FOUND DEAD June 20, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) The bodies of two U.S. soldiers who went missing south of Baghdad last week were found in an area where a group linked to al Qaeda said it had abducted them, an Iraqi defence official said on Tuesday-Reuters reported.
"The two soldiers were killed and they were found in Yusufiya near an electricity plant," Major General Abdul Aziz Mohammed told a news conference in Baghdad
Meanwhile, The U.S. military had launched an intense search for the men involving 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops.
The Mujahideen Shura Council said on Monday it had kidnapped the soldiers - Private Thomas Lowell Tucker, 25, from Madras, Oregon and Private Kristian Menchaca, 23, from Houston, Texas.
The two went missing at dusk on Friday after an ambush at a checkpoint in Yusufiya, a town in an area south of Baghdad some Iraqis call the "Triangle of Death, which is an al Qaeda stronghold. Another soldier was killed in the attack.
The deaths dealt a blow to the U.S. military after it killed the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an air strike on June 7.
Earlier, a car bomb killed seven people in a crowded Baghdad market, in spite of a crackdown on al Qaeda that the government says involves 40,000 Iraqi forces.