Nine U.S. troops reported killed in western Iraq

updated 7:50 p.m. ET April 3, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Four American troops were killed by hostile fire, while five others died and three were missing after their truck rolled over in a flash flood this weekend in separate incidents in western Iraq, the military said Monday.

In violence targeting Iraqis, a suicide truck bomb exploded Monday near a Shiite mosque in northeastern Baghdad as worshippers were leaving after evening prayers, killing at least 10 people and wounding 30, police said.

The U.S. military said it was “using all the resources available” to find the two Marines and a sailor who were missing after Sunday’s accident, which occurred near the Asad air base in Anbar, near the Syrian border.

Five Marines were killed and one was injured when the seven-ton U.S. military truck rolled over in a flash food. The military said it appeared to be an accident and “not a result of enemy action.”

Three Marines and one sailor also were killed by hostile fire elsewhere in the volatile province, the military said Monday, the largest number of American deaths in a single attack in more than a month.

13 U.S. deaths this weekend
The incidents raised to 13 the number of U.S. troops who died this weekend. At least 2,342 American service members have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The explosion occurred about 8 p.m. near the al-Shroofi mosque in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shaab, police Capt. Ali al-Obaidi said. The truck, which was carrying dates, was driven by a suicide bomber, he said.

Iraqi police also reported a dramatic attack on a Shiite family in Baghdad’s Dora district, saying four gunmen charged into a home, lined up a brother, two sisters, and an uncle against a wall and shot them dead.

The father of the family, a grocery shop owner, had been killed six months earlier by gunmen in the same neighborhood, one of the most dangerous in the capital. The mother was visiting relatives when the attack occurred on Sunday, police said.

Sectarian violence has escalated since a Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra and reprisal attacks against Sunni institutions

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, meanwhile, urged Iraqi leaders to form a government as soon as possible to curb the bloodshed and rein in sectarian militias behind much of the violence.

Karim Kadim / AP A bloody puddle marked the spot in Baghdad Monday where a car bomb killed at least one.

In northern Iraq, the regional government of Kurdistan released the Kurdish writer Kamal Karim just a week after he received an 18-month sentence for articles on a Kurdish Web site that accused one of the region’s top leaders of corruption, said Mohamed Khoshnaw, a government spokesman.

The regional prime minister issued a pardon for Karim, citing international pressure to release the writer.

The U.S. military statement did not provide more details about the deaths of the U.S. troops in Anbar. It was the largest number of Americans killed in an attack since Feb. 22, when four soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

The U.S. military also said two American pilots were killed Saturday when their Apache helicopter crashed during combat operations southwest of Baghdad, adding that the aircraft was probably shot down.

Two soldiers also were killed by a roadside bomb late Saturday in central Baghdad, while another died of non-hostile related injuries suffered Thursday near the northern city of Kirkuk, according to the U.S. command.

Elsewhere, a car bombing in Baghdad’s eastern Shiite slum of Sadr City on Monday killed at least two civilians and wounded six others, including a 9-year-old boy, while four people were wounded when a car bomb struck the central district of Karradah in the capital.

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