BAGHDAD (AFP) — A new-style anti-mine armoured vehicle the US military is hoping will reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq has proven vulnerable, with a first soldier killed in an attack at the weekend.
"An American soldier was killed in an improvised explosive device attack on a MRAP vehicle in Arab Jabour" on the southern outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday, US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said on Tuesday.
"This was the first fatality involving an IED (roadside bomb) attack on a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) anywhere," he added.
"There were three other soldiers who sustained non life-threatening injuries as a result of the attack," Danielson said.
"The incident is still under investigation and no other details are available."
Some 1,500 MRAP vehicles, most of them with V-shaped hulls specially designed to deflect the blast from a roadside bomb, have been deployed in Iraq since May last year, said Danielson.
Roadside bombs are the main choice of weapon of the numerous insurgent groups operating in Iraq and primary cause of US troop casualties.
A US military source who would not be named said the soldier killed was a gunner, who sits on top of the vehicle rather than in its specially protected belly.
The incident occured in a rural belt about 50 kilometres (30 miles) southeast of Baghdad where US and Iraqi forces have launched a major assault on suspected Al-Qaeda in Iraq safe havens.
MRAPs are being used in the area by troops of the US 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment to edge forwards through territory littered with roadside bombs, according to an AFP photographer travelling with the unit.
Ground forces are moving in on the mainly Sunni area that was heavily bombed by US warplanes in three separate air strikes, including overnight Sunday when, according to the US military, a total of 19,000 pounds (9,000 kilos) of bombs were dropped.
The vehicle hit by the roadside bomb was driving beside an irrigation ditch, supporting soldiers of the Second Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, who had been clearing farmhouses and villages after a dawn air raid, according to the New York Times on Tuesday.
The report said the vehicle was thrown into the air and spun 180 degrees before smashing down with its nose shattered beside the ditch.
The report said three of the four people aboard suffered only broken feet and cuts. It was unclear if the gunner was killed by the blast or when the vehicle rolled over.
The newspaper quoted US military commander Captain Michael Fritz as saying the force of the blast would have been enough to "take out" a heavily armoured Bradley tank -- the other main armoured vehicle being used in Iraq along with the Humvee.
"The crew compartment is intact," said Fritz.
Danielson said deployment of the MRAP vehicles "aimed to provide improved protection for our forces."
"The MRAP has proven to be a much improved vehicle in terms of protecting troops from the effects of improvised explosive devices. However no vehicle is 100 percent invulnerable to attack," he said.
The Pentagon last year decided that the deployment of the MRAP was a priority and ordered 15,400 of them at a cost of 22.4 billion dollars.
Some 500 have also been deployed in Afghanistan.
Standing about 3.6 metres (12 feet) high and weighing around 18 tons, the vehicles can carry six to 10 soldiers, depending on the model.
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