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Six more U.S. soldiers killed
in Iraq
Paul Tait
Reuters
Friday May 25, 2007
The U.S. military announced on Friday the deaths of six more soldiers
in Iraq, hours after U.S. President George W. Bush predicted a bloody
summer lay ahead.
Five of the soldiers died on Thursday while another was killed
on Tuesday by a roadside bomb in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north
of Baghdad, the military said.
April was the worst month this year for the U.S. military since
the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, with 104 soldiers
killed. About 90 have been killed in May so far.
The total death toll for U.S. troops since the invasion now stands
at 3,440.
The U.S. military has deployed thousands of extra troops around
Baghdad and other areas in a last-ditch attempt to drag Iraq back
from the brink of all-out sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites
and Sunni Arabs dominant under Saddam.
The crackdown is an attempt to buy time for Iraqi Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki's government to meet political benchmarks set by
Washington, including a revenue-sharing oil law, aimed at promoting
national reconciliation.
Bush told a news conference in Washington on Thursday he expected
heavy fighting in Iraq in the weeks and months ahead.
He predicted insurgents and Sunni Islamist al Qaeda would try to
influence the U.S. debate on the war by launching major attacks
before General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq,
hands him a progress report in September.
"It could be a bloody -- it could be a very difficult August,"
Bush told reporters.
A CBS News/New York Times poll said 76 percent of Americans thought
the war was going badly for the United States.
One of the fiercest critics of the U.S. presence in Iraq, influential
Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, made his first public appearance
since the crackdown began when he attended Friday prayers in the
holy city of Kufa.
The U.S. military has said he went into hiding in Iran to escape
the crackdown. Aides to the young cleric, who led two uprisings
against U.S. forces in 2004, say he never left Kufa.
Sadr's sudden reappearance comes at a crucial time for Iraqi politics.
Six Sadrist ministers withdrew from Maliki's weak and divided government
last month in protest at the premier's refusal to set a timetable
for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
ROADSIDE BOMB
Insurgents defied the weekly Friday curfew in Baghdad to detonate
bombs under a bridge linking two Sunni districts in the west of
the capital, police said.
The bridge over a roadway was still standing but had been badly
damaged. No casualties were reported.
In the worst attack on U.S. soldiers on Thursday, two died when
their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. An Iraqi
interpreter was also killed.
Another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Nineveh province
near Tikrit.
The U.S military also reported the deaths of one soldier from small
arms fire in volatile Diyala province and another from a roadside
bomb in nearby Salahaddin province.
The military has said it anticipated it would suffer more casualties
when it launched the security crackdown in February.
Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of
staff, said sectarian murders had risen in May but were still well
below levels before the security crackdown began.
He told a Pentagon news conference just over 1,400 civilian deaths
were recorded in January, with 800 in February and just over 500
in March and about the same in April.
But he said the number of sectarian killings had risen by between
20 and 30 percent in May.
(With additional reporting by Ross Colvin in Baghdad and Khaled
Farhan in Kufa)
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