Attacks kill 1 US Marine, 3 soldiers in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- The US military said yesterday that four more Americans were killed Wednesday, a Marine in the central city of Ramadi and three soldiers targeted by a car bombing in southwest Baghdad.

Their deaths, along with those of 14 Marines in western Iraq announced earlier, brought Wednesday's toll for US forces to 18.

The start of August has been among the bloodiest stretches for American troops since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and nonactive-duty service members have borne the brunt. The 20 Marines killed in two attacks this week were reservists, and the soldiers killed Wednesday were members of the Georgia National Guard.

The news of more US fatalities came on a day in which the nation's prime minister announced a new security plan and said Iraqi forces were making the country safer, while the top US military spokesman in Iraq told reporters that data showed the tempo of insurgent attacks was decreasing.

''The security situation is improving, especially Iraqi security forces with regard to both quality and quantity," Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said as he outlined a 12-point security program.

Under the new plan, four intelligence services will be consolidated into one operation, and responsibility over security of the country's infrastructure will be put in the hands of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi.

Jaafari provided few other details of the plan, beyond general pledges, for example, to secure Iraq's borders and improve relations with its neighbors.

At a later news conference, Air Force Brigadier General Donald Alston, the military spokesman, said, ''The numbers that we see indicate that [insurgents] can't generate the same tempo" of attacks as in previous months. The 13 car bombs detonated across Iraq last week represented the fewest since April, Alston said, although he declined to provide data for other forms of insurgent attacks such as roadside bombs.

''This is not an expanding insurgency," Alston said. ''What we are seeing is probably the opposite."

Insurgent tactics have gotten more effective and sophisticated, Alston acknowledged, saying the insurgents have modified their attacks to counteract improvements in the armor applied to US vehicles, using larger and more lethal forms of explosives. ''What we are seeing is an adaptive enemy," he said.

In Baghdad, the three soldiers killed Wednesday night were from the 48th Brigade of the Georgia National Guard, which arrived in Iraq in May 2. Lieutenant Selena Owens, a spokeswoman with the unit, said another soldier was seriously wounded.

In Jordan, a military prosecutor said Jordan has arrested 17 militants linked to Al Qaeda who were allegedly plotting to attack US troops and Jordanian intelligence agents, the Associated Press reported. The militants belonged to the Iraqi chapter of Al Qaeda, which is led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and a previously unknown Saudi group called the Brigades of the Holy Shrines, prosecutor Major Fawaz al-Otoum said in a statement.