US military sees first Iraq fatality in new armoured vehicle

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2008

BAGHDAD (AFP) — An American soldier killed in a weekend roadside bomb attack in Iraq became the first fatality in a new-style armoured vehicle designed to protect troops, the US military said on Tuesday.

"This was the first fatality involving an IED (roadside bomb) attack on a MRAP anywhere," spokesman Major Winfield Danielson told AFP.

He said the soldier was killed by the roadside bomb on Saturday in the Arab Jabour rural area just south of Baghdad, where US and Iraq forces have launched a major assault on suspected Al-Qaeda in Iraq safe havens.

Some 1,500 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, with a V-shaped hull specially designed to deflect the blast from a roadside bomb, have been deployed in Iraq since May last year, said Danielson.

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