Eight United States soldiers were killed in Iraq on Sunday, including six who died along with a European journalist in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad, the US military said.
Earlier, a car bomb killed 35 people and wounded 80 next to a crowded market in a Shi’ite district of Baghdad which has been a repeated target of attacks blamed on Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda.
They were among the bloodiest incidents of violence on a day when nearly 100 people were either killed or found dead.
The US military said iIn a statement that the six soldiers and the journalist were killed in volatile Diyala province when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle.
US military spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said the journalist was European and worked for a news organisation that did not have a permanent presence in Baghdad. He declined to give more information.
Dozens of foreign reporters have been embedding with US military units during a US-backed security crackdown in and around Baghdad that began in February.
The offensive is seen as a last-ditch attempt to halt Iraq’s slide into all-out civil war between majority Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam Hussein.
The attack in Diyala was one of the most lethal single strikes against US forces in months. The US military recently sent around 1 000 reinforcements to fight entrenched al-Qaeda militants and Sunni Arab insurgents in the province.
Two other US soldiers were killed in separate bomb attacks on Sunday, the military said, one of them in Baghdad.
The US military also reported that two US marines were killed on Saturday in western Anbar province and one soldier was killed in Baghdad on Friday.
That makes 28 US soldiers killed this month, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks military casualties. In April, 104 were killed, making it one of the deadliest months since the US-led invasion in 2003.
The Baghdad security push is being bolstered by 30 000 extra US troops who are expected to be in place by June 1. The offensive has reduced sectarian death squad killings, but car bombs still plague the city.
Dead carried in blankets
In Baghdad’s Bayaa district, bystanders used blankets to carry the dead and wounded to trucks after the car bombing next to the market. The blast tore off shopfronts and destroyed cars.
”What did these innocent people do to get killed in a car bomb? Where is the government? … Where is security? Let the government come and see this situation,” said one man, angrily gesticulating at the scene.
North of the capital, two suicide car bombers attacked police positions in the city of Samarra, killing 12 policemen, including Samarra’s police commander, officials said. They said 15 people were wounded.
Suspected al-Qaeda militants blew up a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006, unleashing a wave of sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands.
US forces killed up to 10 militants and destroyed a torture room in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a bastion of the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
American commanders said the predawn raid, on suspected members of a cell known for smuggling sophisticated bombs from Iran, found 150 mortar bombs in the same building as the torture room and troops destroyed them in a controlled blast.
Iraq is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. The Vienna-based International Press Institute said last month that 46 journalists were killed last year in the country, of whom 44 were Iraqis.
The last foreign journalists to be killed in Iraq were two British journalists working for US television network CBS. They were among four people killed a year ago when a car bomb struck a US military patrol in Baghdad. – Reuters