BAGHDAD, Iraq – A U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack Thursday, the latest casualties in a string of almost daily anti-American attacks in the restive center of the country.

Assailants fired at a U.S. convoy about 30 miles south of Baghdad, striking a military ambulance that was carrying a soldier injured in another incident, Central Command said.

The attack brought to 13 the number of Americans killed in action since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1, according to newly released Pentagon statistics.

That toll is significantly lower than the widely published figure of about 50 postwar U.S. deaths, which includes soldiers who died in accidents or from illness.

Still, the number of American deaths by hostile fire only partly reflects the level of guerrilla activity. The U.S. military usually reports only the hostilities that cause serious injury to troops, leaving scores of non-lethal firefights, failed ambushes and snipings undisclosed.

“We don’t necessarily issue a press release for every single engagement,” said Sgt. 1st Class Brian Thomas, a spokesman for Central Command. “We rank things by severity. We’re not into number games.”

Over the last two weeks, for example, soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division stationed just east of Baghdad have come under repeated attack from Iraqis without any of the incidents being made public, the unit’s combat logs show.

Troops were targeted by rocket-propelled grenades at least twice and exchanged fire with four rifle-toting Iraqis. Hand grenades were lobbed at the Americans from a highway overpass, and three occupants of a Humvee were slightly injured when someone punctured the tires with a truck-mounted recoilless rifle.

None of those attacks was reported.

Responding to increasingly deadly attacks north and west of Baghdad, the U.S. forces have unleashed two counterinsurgency campaigns in central Iraq over the past two weeks. The current operation, code-named “Desert Scorpion,” so far has resulted in the arrest of roughly 400 suspected fighters and the seizure of guns, money and explosives, military sources said.

In Thursday’s incident, a soldier with the 804th Medical Brigade was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into an Army ambulance near the small farming town of Al-Iskanderiyah south of Baghdad.

That assault came on the heels of a fatal shooting of an 82nd Airborne Division trooper who was doing crowd-control duty at a propane plant in southern Baghdad on Wednesday. And an Iraqi civilian was killed and 12 injured when militants mortared a U.S. base in Samarra, north of Baghdad, that same day.

“They walked up to one of our men and shot him in the back with a 9 mm pistol,” said Capt. Kent Burgess, an officer of the 82nd Airborne Division casualty. “Attacks like this are going to slow the progress of change in Iraq.”

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AP-NY-06-19-03 2137EDT