IRAQ

Sidney Morning Herald: US baffled as troops in Iraq hit by killer virus

The United States Army has dispatched a team of medical experts to Iraq to investigate a serious outbreak of pneumonia among US troops, with two dead and more than 100 ill.

Lieutenant-General James Peake, the army's surgeon general, has sent a team of six to Iraq and two more doctors to Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany, where some of the troops were treated after being flown from Iraq, officials said on Friday.

Army Medical Command spokeswoman Lyn Kukral said: "It is pneumonia. The question is: what is the cause?"

"You've got a healthy population and a young population [of US troops], and you have two soldiers who have died, and that's a concern."