Ambush kills five US troops in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- Al Qaeda militants holed up in a volatile southeastern Baghdad neighborhood were believed responsible for an ambush that killed five US soldiers scouring the capital for bomb-building sites, a spokesman for US-led forces said yesterday.

After a sniper's bullet felled a soldier Saturday in the Arab Jubour district, his fellow troops from Task Force Marne rushed the house from which the shot was fired, said Janah Hammoud. As they did, an explosion from a pressure-activated blast killed four more soldiers and injured four.

Since the Pentagon stepped up its offensive against Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants with the addition of 28,500 troops sent to Iraq this year, casualties have mounted, as has the complexity of attacks on US patrols. The latest deaths bring to at least 3,689 the number of Americans killed since the US-led invasion began in March 2003, according to the website icasualties.org.

Task Force Marne, which has lost at least 70 soldiers in four months, has been targeting insurgent bomb-making sites and safe houses in the capital's violence-plagued southern underbelly. The area is also the scene of much of the sectarian killings plaguing the city.

Coalition forces also raided suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq hide-outs in western Baghdad, Samarra, Mosul, and Tikrit yesterday, arresting 30 suspected militants, including two accused of weapons trafficking for the group, the military reported.

"Our operations continue to target those who associate with and work for Al Qaeda in Iraq's leaders," said Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver, a US military spokesman. "The pressure is on, and we are keeping them on the run."

Meanwhile, embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on the fractious political and ethnic factions to hold a summit within the next few days to renew efforts at national reconciliation.

"I have extended an invitation to the main political leadership to meet and discuss essential issues in the political process," Maliki told Iraqi television, vowing that his Shi'ite-led government would find compromise with Sunni, Kurdish, and other factions if their power-sharing concerns were legitimate and constitutional.

It remained uncertain, however, whether Sunni leaders would heed the call for negotiations. The leader of the largest Sunni political bloc in the Iraqi Parliament yesterday appealed to neighboring Arab countries for help in defeating what he called Iranian-supported Shi'ite violence against Sunnis.

Baghdad is at risk of falling to "Persians" and "Safawis," said Adnan Dulaimi of the Iraqi Accordance Front, accusing Iranian-backed death squads of trying to drive Sunnis from the capital.

Seventeen of Maliki's 37 Cabinet ministers have abandoned the government in recent weeks, many asserting that the Shi'ite prime minister has turned a blind eye to torture, assassinations, and execution-style slayings by Shi'ite militants. Much of the violence has been blamed on Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Al Mahdi militia operating from the impoverished Sadr City area of the capital.

President Bush ordered the increase in troop levels this year, bringing the total US deployment to near 160,000, in an attempt to quell both insurgents and sectarian extremists so that Maliki could firm up the fragile ethnic and religious coalition that make up his government. The political alliance has shown signs of unraveling, though, heightening concerns about Iraq's future and the effectiveness of the surge.

Mortars landed on a northern neighborhood of the capital yesterday at 9:15 p.m. local time, killing four Iraqis. An Iraqi soldier on vacation was gunned down outside his home in Babel, and an Interior Ministry source reported that 17 bullet-riddled male bodies were found during the day dumped around Baghdad.