4 U.S. Soldiers and a Marine Killed in Iraq

***

Excuse me, you not

We sure as hell have, We are

still counting the thousands

of dead and mutilated sons

and daughters husbands and

wives of America, and the

10s of thousands innocent

Iraqi.


By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: August 11, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 10 - Four soldiers operating with a New York-based Army National Guard division were killed Tuesday, and five soldiers and an American military contractor were wounded when insurgents attacked a patrol near Baiji, in northern Iraq, the American military said Wednesday.

The American command also disclosed that a member of the Second Marine Division was killed Tuesday by small arms fire while on patrol near Habbaniya, a predominantly Sunni town west of Falluja, in Anbar Province, a redoubt for the insurgency.

Leaders of Iraq's political blocs met Wednesday in Baghdad for the third time to try to resolve issues that have stymied a committee mandated to draft a new constitution. But with only five days to go before their deadline, none of the most contentious issues were settled - including the role of Islam in legislation, the future of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and how power should be shared between the central government and regional authorities, officials said.

A roadside bomb struck the American patrol in Baiji, an oil refining town, while it was investigating an earlier explosion in the area, said Sgt. First Class David Rhodes, a spokesman for the 42nd Infantry Division. The division has been overseeing security in four northern provinces since February.

As soldiers tended to the casualties, the patrol came under attack by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the spokesman said. The contractor wounded in the attack was a dog handler, he said; dogs are often used by the military to detect explosives.

Military officials did not disclose the identity of the casualties or say whether they were members of the 42nd Infantry Division, which includes soldiers from more than 10 states. In Iraq, the division's commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto, is leading a task force of 23,000 troops drawn from an assortment of National Guard, Army Reserve and active duty units.

In other violence, a high-ranking official in Iraq's Interior Ministry was kidnapped Wednesday in a predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood of northern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Brig. Gen. Khudayer Abbas, who was also the security adviser to Ayad Allawi when he was prime minister, was kidnapped after leaving the offices of Mr. Allawi's political party in Adamiya.

In a village northwest of Kirkuk, gunmen opened fire on a surveying team that was delineating parcels of land to give to returning Kurds who had been deported from the area under Saddam Hussein's government, a Kirkuk police official said.

The official, Brig. Sarhad Kadir, said the gunmen had killed a surveyor and wounded three others in a predominantly Arab village 22 miles from Kirkuk. Iraqi troops responded, and in an ensuing gun battle, one Iraqi soldier died and another was wounded. An American military unit encircled the village and began a door-to-door sweep, he said.

In the Baghdad suburb of Ghazaliya, a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to a patrol of Iraqi police officers, killing 2 officers and 4 civilians, and wounding 2 other officers and 14 civilians, an Interior Ministry official reported.

Insurgents also fired a mortar round into Antar Square in Adamiya, the same Baghdad neighborhood where the ministry official was kidnapped, killing a traffic policeman and wounding seven other people, the ministry aide said.

Leaders of the country's political blocs meeting Wednesday wrestled with several of the most intractable issues, including federalism, the distribution of oil revenues and the electoral system, said a spokesman for President Jalal Talabani, who attended the meeting. The National Assembly has given itself an Aug. 15 deadline to approve a draft constitution, in order to submit it for a referendum in October.

The spokesman, Kamraan Qaradaghi, also said the roster of participants had widened to include several political groups that represent Sunni Arabs but have no representation in the National Assembly, including the Sunni Endowment, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the National Dialogue Council. The Bush administration has been pushing the Shiite-dominated government to incorporate more Sunni Arabs into the political process.

Adding to the intrigue, three leaders of Shiite factions conferred in a series of round-robin meetings in the holy Shiite city of Najaf. The country's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, met separately with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the government's two dominant Shiite parties; and with Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric who led two uprisings against the American military last year. Then Mr. Hakim and Mr. Sadr met on their own. Mr. Hakim acknowledged that he had discussed the constitution with both men.

The Iraqi Ministry of Defense announced Wednesday that security forces had discovered and defused a car bomb in the upscale Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad.

The American command said it had concluded a weeklong offensive in the Euphrates River corridor in Anbar Province, where insurgents last week carried out a series of attacks against American forces, including two ambushes that killed 20 marines.

But the results of the effort to choke off insurgent strongholds and supply corridors appeared modest, according to the final scorecard posted by the military: Soldiers discovered 9 vehicle bombs, 6 of them in a garage apparently used for rigging such weapons, and 28 improvised bombs planted on the side of roads or near buildings. The troops also detained 36 suspected insurgents for questioning, the military said.

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