Iraq

U.S. soldier killed, two injured in explosion

A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded early today when a powerful explosion went off as their convoy made its way along a highway west of Baghdad, soldiers at the scene said.

The explosion occurred at about 9 a.m. as a 20-vehicle military convoy was passing a wrecked car that had been abandoned alongside the road, Spc. Jose Colon told The Associated Press. The soldier that died was blown out of a truck that was nearest to the blast, Colon said. Soldiers believe a bomb was hidden in the car wreckage.

He and another soldier, Spc. Adalberto Bonilla, were in a car behind the most badly damaged vehicle, but were unharmed. About a half hour after the attack, the truck that absorbed the brunt of the blast’s force was still burning. U.S. soldiers sealed off the road.

The convoy was on its way to a U.S. base in the desert near Iraq’s border with Jordan. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he had no information about the incident.

Also today, a U.S. Marine died in the southern city of Hilla when he fell off a building he was guarding. The soldier was rushed to a hospital but later died.

Jerusalem

Israelis free taxi driver in dramatic West Bank raid

Israeli special forces stormed a house in the West Bank early today and freed a taxi driver from his Palestinian captors, the military said, ending an abduction that threatened a tenuous Mideast cease-fire.

Eliyahu Goral, 61, was rescued hours after a Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the fatal stabbing of an Israeli sitting with his girlfriend on a seaside bench. Israel’s foreign minister warned that Palestinian officials were running out of time to disarm the militants, a step Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has refused to take.

Israel TV reported that the kidnappers were criminals who were trying to win favor with militant groups and the Palestinian Authority, but no group agreed to take the Israeli from them.

London

Marine says he’ll contact FBI about meeting girl

Toby Studabaker, the former U.S. Marine who disappeared with a 12-year-old English girl he met over the Internet, has phoned his relatives to say the child is safe and that he was contacting the FBI, his brother said Tuesday.

Leo Studabaker told BBC News his brother did not give his location or that of the girl, Shevaun Pennington. Police traced them as far as Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris.

Leo Studabaker said his 31-year-old brother had been deceived into meeting the girl and that he was “very mad when he found she had lied about her age.”

Greater Manchester Police said they had not yet been able to confirm that the ex-Marine had been in touch with the FBI, but that police officers were checking. They also said it had been confirmed that Shevaun was not the passenger named Pennington who flew to Liverpool on Saturday from de Gaulle airport, as French police had believed.