Bombs kill 4 US troops in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- The military said yesterday that four US soldiers had been killed in Iraq, pushing the American death toll past 1,700. Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of 28 people, many thought to be Sunni Arabs, buried in shallow graves or dumped in Baghdad.

The bodies were discovered as the Shi'ite-led government pressed to open disarmament talks with insurgents responsible for the relentless violence that has taken on ominous sectarian overtones with recurring tit-for-tat killings.

A crackdown by Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and offensives carried out by US forces in western Iraq have only temporarily blunted the carnage in which at least 940 people have died since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his government six weeks ago.

Jaafari's spokesman, Laith Kuba, said many militant groups were reaching out to the government. He urged them to lay down their arms.

Some insurgents are motivated to end their resistance, Kuba argued, by the election of an Iraqi government that put the American presence in the background.

''Now is the right time for any group to lay down their weapons and take part in the [political] process," he said.

The offer did not include foreign extremists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, because ''they only want to kill," Kuba said.

Four American soldiers died Saturday in two roadside bombings west of Baghdad, increasing to at least 1,701 the number of US forces who have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. The number includes five military civilians.

Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for multiple suicide bombings, including Saturday's attack inside Baghdad's heavily guarded Interior Ministry headquarters. That attack killed at least three people and targeted the feared Wolf Brigade, a Shi'ite-dominated commando unit that Sunnis say is killing members of their community.

Yesterday General Rashid Flaiyeh, who runs all the Interior Ministry elite units, including the Wolf Brigade, escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a mortar barrage hit his mother's funeral in northern Baghdad. Eleven mourners were wounded, Lieutenant Ismael Abdul Sattar said.

Lieutenant Ayad Othman said a shepherd found the buried bodies of 20 men Friday in the Nahrawan Desert, 20 miles east of Baghdad. ''All were blindfolded, and their hands were tied behind their backs, and shot from behind," Othman said.

Witnesses said the slain men were Sunnis, said a statement from the influential Sunni organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars. No details were provided to support the contention.

The bodies of eight men shot in the head were found yesterday in two locations in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite northern suburb of Shula, police Captain Majed Abdul Aziz said. The bodies could not be identified late yesterday.

The gruesome discoveries were announced two days after 21 men were found slain Friday near Qaim, on the Syrian frontier.

It was feared that the bodies may have been those of Iraqi soldiers who went missing Wednesday after leaving their base in Akashat, a village near Qaim, in a bus bound for Baghdad.

Last month, multiple groups of bodies turned up in locations across Iraq. Many were apparent revenge killings, which have raised fears of sectarian civil war.

Despite the violence, there were several positive developments yesterday.

French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi assistant, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, were freed Saturday after five months in captivity. Aubenas left Baghdad at noon on a French government plane in the middle of a sandstorm.

About 2,000 soccer fans watched two of Iraq's elite teams play at Baghdad's biggest sports complex, the 50,000-capacity Shaab Stadium. It reopened to the public yesterday after it was commandeered two years ago for a US military base.