Five US troops killed in Iraq attack

Five US service members were killed in a rocket attack in Iraq on Monday, in the worst single toll for American troops in the country for at least two years, the US military and Iraqi security officials said. The attack showed Iraq's security situation is still precarious despite a decline in violence, as US troops prepare to withdraw from the country more than eight years after the invasion that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein.
A US statement gave no details of how the US personnel were killed in central Iraq. But a senior Iraqi security official said the Americans had died when militants fired rockets into a joint base in Baghdad's Baladiyat district. At least 13 people, mostly Iraqi soldiers, were killed on Monday when a suicide bomber detonated a car in an attack on security forces in the central city of Tikrit.