Five US troops killed in Baghdad attack

BAGHDAD -- US troops patrolling in Sadr City, Baghdad's densely populated Shi'ite Muslim slum, were attacked yesterday with automatic-rifle fire, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and hidden explosives. Five American soldiers were killed and five wounded in the deadliest of three separate clashes.

The attacks in the capital, which brought the number of US combat deaths in Iraq to 601, coincided with hopes of a cease-fire between Shi'ite militia fighters and US forces in the Najaf area, 90 miles to the south. The Baghdad fighting was a reminder of the violence that continues here while diplomats make plans at the United Nations for turning over limited authority to an interim government June 30 and restoring momentum to the flagging international reconstruction effort.

A US military spokeswoman said the first attack occurred in the early morning, with mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades hitting a police station where US soldiers were stationed. Residents said three Iraqis were killed in the ensuing gun battle.

Later in the morning, US military vehicles came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles. US soldiers returned fire, the spokeswoman said, but there were no known casualties.

Shortly after muezzins called the faithful to yesterday's midday prayer in the strongly Muslim neighborhood, a roadside explosive detonated as US troops in Humvees drove by, killing five Americans and wounding five, she reported.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, in his first address to the nation, called on Iraqis to rise up against the insurgents responsible for such attacks, calling them terrorists and aggressors, and promised his countrymen that the United States and its allies would genuinely give back Iraq's sovereignty on June 30.

Reading dryly from a text, Allawi declared that Iraqis cannot accept foreign occupation but added that the 138,000 US troops and their allies must remain for a time to impose order.

''Targeting the multinational forces of the United Nations, which are led by the United States, with the aim of expelling them from Iraq will inflict a major catastrophe in the country, especially if that happened before Iraq completes the rebuilding of its security and military institutions," Allawi said, referring to the insurgents' aim of driving out foreign forces.

''Let us all be one hand, act as one man, with our heads held high, to defeat terrorism and terrorists," he said.

But the task facing Allawi -- and by extension the Bush administration -- was evident in a statement issued by Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shi'ite cleric whose militia known as the Mahdi Army is confronting US troops in Najaf and other southern cities. Sadr rejected Allawi's four-day-old government, saying it is illegitimate because it was ''appointed by the occupier."

Despite the clashes and tough talk, the Najaf governor, Adnan Zurufi, announced that Sadr's militia and US forces in the area had agreed to renew a cease-fire they reached eight days ago but never really abided by.

Because the agreement essentially was a reiteration of the first truce, it was impossible to tell whether fighting in the Najaf and Kufa area would really subside.

A US commander in Najaf, Colonel Brad May, told a CNN correspondent that the deal calls for US forces to pull back from positions near Shi'ite shrines in Najaf and make room for Iraqi police, who would patrol the streets.

In other developments:

The US military announced that Iraqi police had captured a man described by a US spokesman as ''a known terrorist and murder suspect." The man, identified as Omar Baziyani, was an associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian blamed by US authorities for attacks on American soldiers here.

The Army reported 16 more criminal investigations into possible misconduct by US soldiers against detainees and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The revised figures brought to 85 the number of inquiries by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division.

At least one of the new investigations was triggered by the killing of an Iraqi last week after a car chase near Kufa. During the chase, the driver and a passenger of an Iraqi vehicle were wounded, the driver seriously. A US soldier, not identified in the statement, then shot and killed the driver at close range.