13 U.S. Troops Dead In Violent Weekend

Iraq: Four Killed By Hostile Fire, Five Marines Dead In Truck Accident

(CBS/AP)  Four American troops were killed by hostile fire, while five others died and three were missing after their truck rolled over in a flash flood this weekend in separate incidents in western Iraq, the military said Monday.

In violence targeting Iraqis, a suicide truck bomb exploded Monday near a Shiite mosque in northeastern Baghdad as worshippers were leaving after evening prayers, killing at least 10 people and wounding 30, police said.

The U.S. military said it was "using all the resources available" to find the two Marines and a sailor who were missing after Sunday's accident, which occurred near the Asad air base in Anbar, near the Syrian border. CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports that flash flooding spurred by unseasonable storms over the weekend seem to have caused the seven-ton U.S. Marine truck to roll over.

At least nine marines and sailors are dead, and three more are missing, after the two incidents Sunday in al Anbar province, Dozier reports.

The incidents raised to 13 the number of U.S. troops who died this weekend. At least 2,342 American service members have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, meanwhile in a surprise visit to Baghdad, urged Iraqi leaders to form a government as soon as possible to curb the bloodshed and rein in sectarian militias behind much of the violence.

The visit by Rice and Straw comes at a time of uncertainty over the fate of interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite nominee for a second term but widely blamed for the deadlock in talks on forming a unity government following the Dec. 15 election.

Violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims has escalated since a Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra and reprisal attacks against Sunni institutions.

In other developments:

The U.S. military also said two American pilots were killed Saturday when their Apache helicopter crashed during combat operations southwest of Baghdad, adding that the aircraft was probably shot down.

Two other soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb late Saturday in central Baghdad, according to the U.S. command.

Elsewhere, a car bombing in Baghdad's eastern Shiite slum of Sadr City on Monday killed at least two civilians and wounded six others, including a 9-year-old boy, while four people were wounded when a car bomb struck the central district of Karradah in the capital.

Six people — a navy officer, two policemen, two workers at an electrical plant and a boy — were killed by drive-by shooters in a market area of the southern city of Basra, police said.

North of the capital in Nibaie, gunmen killed two truck drivers and kidnapped another while they were carrying construction materials to the U.S. military base in Balad, police said.

Drive-by shooters killed a police captain outside his home late Sunday in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, police said.

Police also discovered three bodies in eastern Baghdad neighborhoods. One in Mashtal was handcuffed and shot in the head, another in Baladiyat was strangled and covered with bandages, and the third was found in Sadr City, shot in the forehead.

Bombings in Buhriz also damaged several buildings including a barber shop and grocery store in a market district of the town, which is a former Saddam Hussein stronghold about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.

The regional government of Kurdistan released Kurdish writer Kamal Karim just a week after he received an 18-month sentence for articles on a Kurdish Web site that accused one of the region's top leaders of corruption, said Mohamed Khoshnaw, a government spokesman. The prime minister of the Kurdish regional government issued a pardon for Karim, citing international pressure to release the writer.

Former hostage Jill Carroll arrived in Boston on Sunday. The Christian Science Monitor reporter was held captive for 82 days in Iraq.

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©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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