US soldier kills five colleagues at Iraq base

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US soldier is suspected of opening fire on his comrades at the largest American base in Iraq on Monday, killing five soldiers in what was the single deadliest toll on US forces in a month.
A US defence official in Washington said that at least three others were wounded in the deadly attack at a Camp Liberty clinic in Baghdad for soldiers suffering from war-related stress.
President Barack Obama was saddened and shocked by the killings of five US soldiers in Iraq, apparently by one of their comrades, his spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday.
Details of the incident remained sketchy, but the US military in Iraq said an American soldier suspected in the shooting had been detained. Initial US TV reports said a soldier had turned the gun on himself.
Five coalition forces members were killed in a shooting at Camp Liberty in Baghdad today at approximately 2 pm (1100 GMT), the US statement said, adding that the incident was under investigation.
A US soldier suspected of being involved with the shootings is currently in custody.
The shooting was the single bloodiest toll of US forces in Iraq since April 10 when five American soldiers were killed by a suicide truck bomb that ploughed into a local police compound in the northern city of Mosul.
Attacks by stressed US soldiers on their colleagues are not uncommon in Iraq, and the last such report was on September 14 when US sergeant Joseph Bozicevich shot dead two of his superiors at a base south of Baghdad.
Bozicevich, 39, killed staff sergeant Darris Dawson, 24, and sergeant Wesley Durbin, 26, because he could not bear being berated by them, according to reports. Nearly a fifth of American soldiers deployed in Iraq suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to the US militarys battlemind.army.mil website.
Mondays attack in Baghdad comes at sensitive time in the US militarys six-year occupation of the country it invaded to topple Saddam Hussein.
A spree of recent violence in the capital has raised concerns about whether Iraqi security forces are battle ready as American forces prepare to withdraw from the nations cities.
Baghdad has been hard hit by a series of deadly bombings targeting crowded civilian areas in recent weeks, and April was the bloodiest month in Iraq since September, with 355 people killed, according to official figures.
Despite the recent attacks, Iraq has insisted it will stick to the deadline for American troops to withdraw from cities by June 30, while Washingtons top commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, has insisted the pullout is on track.
The US military also announced on Monday that an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the southern oil hub of Basra on May 10.
Mondays shooting brought to 4,293 the number of American losses since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to an AFP count based on the independent website icasualties.org.
Also on Monday, one of Baghdads most senior police chiefs was assassinated in a drive-by shooting, a police official told AFP. Gunmen shot dead Abdul Hussein Mohsen al-Kadhemi, as he was driving in central Baghdad.
And in Mosul, considered to be the last urban stronghold of Islamist militants in Iraq, one policeman was killed and another was wounded when their patrol was attacked by gunmen.
Rakan Aziz, a former senior military officer turned politician, was also shot dead in the citys central Muthana district, police said.