3 U.S. troops, interpreter killed in Iraq blast

updated 1:39 a.m. ET June 25, 2008

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers and an interpreter north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The roadside bombing occurred about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday in Nineveh province, where al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups remain active. The U.S. statement contained no further details.

Their deaths brought to at least 4,109 the number of U.S. military members who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

At least 25 service members have died this month. May's death tally of 19 was the lowest monthly toll of the Iraq conflict.

Elsewhere, Iraqi police reported 14 Shiite gunmen were arrested after fighting south of the capital.

Sporadic clashes
The violence in the south broke out before dawn near Nassiriyah, 200 miles south of Baghdad, as Iraqi forces were conducting house-to-house searches for Shiite militants.

Nassiriyah police chief Brig. Gen. Sabah al-Fatlawi said 14 suspects had been arrested but that sporadic clashes were continuing.

The area is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and has been plagued by power struggles between rival Shiite factions — some with close ties to the Shiite-led national government.

Meanwhile, American soldiers using specially trained dogs on Wednesday sifted through the wreckage of an office in Sadr City where a bomb killed 10 people, including four Americans working to restore local government.

Internal Shiite rivalries may have been behind Tuesday's deadly blast inside the district council building in Sadr City, al-Sadr's Baghdad stronghold. The bomb went off inside a councilman's office ahead of an election to choose a new chairman of the council.

The acting head of the council, Jawad al-Itabi, said American investigators were searching the building Wednesday along with sniffer dogs looking for clues. He said 12 people were being detained for questioning, including 10 security guards.

Two of the U.S. dead were soldiers, the military said. The U.S. Embassy said the dead American civilians included one State Department and one Defense Department employee.

An Italian of Iraqi origin who was working as an interpreter for the Americans also was killed, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry.

The State Department identified one of the slain Americans as Steven L. Farley of Guthrie, Okla. He was believed to be the first member of a provincial reconstruction team to be killed in Iraq.

Farley's son, Brett, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his father feared the situation could become dangerous after the council ousted a Sadrist member.

"It was today that they were scheduled to vote on electing a new chairman, a pro-democracy chairman, and he told me pointedly that it was the biggest moment that they had faced over there," Brett Farley said. "He fully understood what the risk was, but he was willing to bear it."

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