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The Pentagon is planning to deploy an experimental laser in Iraq to create a "virtual microphone" capable of detecting and homing in on sniper fire, a senior defense official said Wednesday. Development of that and other exotic technologies is being accelerated by a cutting edge Pentagon research agency to try out against discreet but deadly problems facing US forces in Iraq, like roadside bombs and sniping. "One of the problems we're having is that people in Iraq can almost do anything they want, and get away with it. We don't have a good way to respond," said Anthony Tether,...

Two U.S. Troops Shot, Killed in Baghdad By CHRIS TOMLINSON .c The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Two American soldiers were killed Thursday in separate attacks in Baghdad - one a bold daylight shooting at close range and the other a sniper attack, military officials said. In addition, at least one soldier was injured when a U.S. vehicle hit an explosive in part of the capital believed to have been cleared of land mines. The incidents demonstrate Iraq is still fraught with danger for U.S. forces a month after Saddam Hussein's government fell. ``I have an expectation that we...

U.S. soldier shot dead in apparent sniper attack in Baghdad, Pentagon sources say. Details soon

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- ``We brought everyone home alive.'' For Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, that was the best of a string of accomplishments as his troops in the 82nd Airborne Division prepared to leave Iraq. They cleared several cities of Saddam Hussein's paramilitary. They protected supply lines from snipers and rearguard ambushes. They coordinated security for a Shiite Muslim pilgrimage by some 1 million faithful. This week, some 1,200 soldiers of the 82nd -- a group trained for rapid deployment known as America's 911 force -- began heading for Kuwait, expecting to be stateside by mid-May. They are the first...

<p>BAGHDAD -- The pop, pop, pop of sporadic gunfire has drawn the attention of Sgts. Daniel Osborne and Cyrus Field.</p> <p>Responding to persistent Iraqi attacks on a nearby U.S. military compound, the Army snipers have taken positions on the roof of a nearby abandoned building to wait for the right moment to lock on their targets.</p> <p>For them and other sniper teams lurking in Baghdad, a successful mission often ends with a ferocious craaaaack! And so it would be on this night.</p>

A Zimbabwean soldier killed in Iraq who had signed up to serve in the British Army has been denounced as a "traitor" by Robert Mugabe's regime. The country's state-controlled media has called for the body of "mercenary" Piper Christopher Muzvuru, of the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, to be buried in Britain and not returned to Zimbabwe. Piper Muzvuru, 21, who said shortly before his death that his dearest ambition was to play the bagpipes before the Queen, was killed by a sniper in Basra. Last night his brother, Munqondfi, said from the family's home in Gweru, near Bulawayo: "We don't...

My girlfriend's cousin, a member of the US Army, was shot and killed by a North Korean sniper in the DMZ this week, as was his commanding officer. This has not been reported in the media as far as I've seen.

Four US soldiers wounded in shooting near Baghdad BAGHDAD, April 13 (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers were wounded on Sunday when they were shot at south of Baghdad while clearing an Iraqi arms dump, senior officers told Reuters. "They was an explosion and then they came under direct fire," one said, adding that the incident occured while soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division were clearing rockets and mortar rounds at Mahmudiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of central Baghdad. "Someone fired at them from a building, either over or through a crowd," another officer said. "Because of the firing, the...

April 13, 2003 Doubt and Death on Drive to BaghdadBy STEVEN LEE MYERS AGHDAD, Iraq, April 10 — The sandstorm lasted two days, sapping morale and twice turning the setting sun the color of blood. Lt. Col. Steven E. Landis called the slanting and choking sands "the wrath of Allah." Supplies of water and ammunition ran low in these first days of the war as Iraqi fighters launched unexpectedly fierce attacks on troops and supply lines that now stretched nearly 300 miles to the rear. The Army's Third Infantry Division swept across the harsh, open deserts of southern Iraq in...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The first sign of trouble came in the form of a red bus, loaded with a gang of men with weapons. Then came sniper fire from a warehouse. Before it was over, three Marines were wounded, at least one fatally. The warehouse lay in ruins, and the bus was a blackened hulk. Some of the men inside the bus were captured but others escaped in the fighting. After a three-week drive from Kuwait without a single combat casualty, the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, arrived in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces battled the tattered remnants of Iraq's army for control of downtown Baghdad on Tuesday, crushing a counterattack and seizing a military airport. Saddam Hussein's fate was unknown after an attempt to kill him from the air. Inside the capital to stay, some Army units routed Iraqi fighters from a Republican Guard headquarters. Others discovered a 12-room complex inside a cave, complete with white marble floors, 10-foot ceilings and fluorescent lighting.Marines battled snipers as they fought deeper into the capital from the east. They seized the Rasheed Airport and captured enough ammunition for an estimated...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The matchup Tuesday beneath a highway cloverleaf in Baghdad wouldn't qualify as a battle. But after hours of potshots from Iraqis and fire from U.S. snipers, well over a dozen Iraqis were dead and many more were wounded, without a single Marine injury. The Iraqis, some in streets to one side of the U.S. troops, others in a field on another side, mainly waved Kalashnikov rifles or took random shots that whizzed past the Marines. "There's just no coordination," said Staff Sgt. John Kelley, 29, of Toronto, Ohio. In one of many small-scale engagements in and around...

British snipers have begun operating inside Basra in a series of "harass and destroy" missions against Iraqi paramilitaries defending the city. Royal Marine snipers from 3 Commando At least four Iraqis have been shot dead so far by the snipers, who are hiding in disused buildings or among piles of rubble on the fringes of Basra to mount their attacks. Dozens more Iraqis are thought to have been killed by artillery fire and bombs directed by the snipers, who are also acting as forward observers for coalition forces. Major Ben Farrell, the commanding officer of 2 company of 1st Bn...

Kerry Sanders of MSNBC reports from Nasiriyah where the 8th Marines continue to attempt clear the city of Iraqi resistance. Footage of Cobra gunships attacking Iraqi snipers with 50 caliber, grenade launchers, and Hellfire missiles.

<p>BASRA, Iraq — Hundreds of commandos from the Royal Marines began the battle for Basra yesterday in a ferocious 15-hour assault on fortified Iraqi positions in a southeastern suburb.</p> <p>By nightfall, about 600 men from the 40 Commando unit had taken up what was described as a "consolidation position" in the suburb of Abu al Khasib and were planning to press on today toward the Shatt al Arab waterway.</p>

AL KIFL, IRAQ - All is quiet now except for the rumble of engines in U.S. military vehicles. The Euphrates River silently flows underneath the bridge where those vehicles idle. Stopping by charred cars, trucks or vans, one by one, 3rd Infantry Division soldiers pull dead Iraqis from inside. They silently lay the bloodied bodies in bags, zip them shut and then ease the body bags onto the back of a cargo truck. The soldiers have very little to say. Sgt. Nixon saw a wire wrapped around one man's ankle and tied to an AK-47 rifle. The Iraqi soldiers were...

<p>Peering through his scope, he steadied the black barrel of his rifle against a spine of rock, waiting for his spotter to pick out their quarry in the shadows of the ravine below.</p> <p>"There are three deer on the small switchback. Can you see them?" queried the spotter, hunched behind his partner, focusing his own telescope. "See the cave? Follow it up to the switchback."</p>

Sun 30 Mar 2003 US assassins 'kill Iraqi chiefs' in Baghdad IAN JOHNSTON ijohnston@scotlandonsunday.com AMERICAN special forces have assassinated several senior Iraqi officials in a series of bomb and sniper attacks in Baghdad and other cities, it was revealed yesterday. American government sources say that in the past week of covert operations "more than a handful" of Republican Guard commanders and Ba’ath Party officials have been killed. The ultimate aim of the undercover squads, according to sources, is to kill Saddam Hussein’s closest associates and even the Iraqi president himself. A source said at least some of the explosions seen...

In this cat-and-mouse war, the sniper is king By Gethin Chamberlain, with the Black Watch, near Basra 31 March 2003 It was the tank crew who spotted them first, four men in civilian clothing jumping out of the back of a pick-up truck carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the heart of Zubayr. Corporal Mark Harvey was the first of the snipers to react, dropping to his knee and fixing the man carrying the RPG in his sights, one shot, a moving target, the militia man dropping like a stone, dead before he hit the ground. A clean shot to...

<p>NEAR AZ ZUBAYR, Iraq (AP) -- Just after dawn, an armored assault vehicle with the words, "Saddam Vaccine" painted on four sides drew close to an Iraqi naval base.</p> <p>The back ramp dropped and 23 Marines from Echo Company's 1st Platoon poured out, flopping onto their stomachs in defensive positions behind sand dunes.</p>