World

3 U.S. Troops Killed In Iraq

January 23, 2007 / 1:53 PM EST / CBS/AP

The U.S. military said Tuesday that three American troops had been killed in fighting in Iraq, including a Marine who died south of Baghdad and two soldiers.

The Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died Sunday from wounds sustained in combat while operating in the Multi-National Division-Baghdad area of operation, south of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

The death raised to 28 the number of American troops killed in a particularly bloody weekend for U.S. forces in Iraq — 25 on Saturday and three on Sunday.

A soldier assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 was killed Monday due to enemy action in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, according to the statement.

A roadside bomb also struck a convoy on Monday, killing a soldier with the 89th military police brigade, the military said in a separate statement.

Identities of the deceased were not released pending notification of relatives.

The deaths raised to at least 3,064 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Five Iraqis were killed when two bombs struck separate Shiite targets in Baghdad on Tuesday, a day after a double car bombing tore through the stalls of a market crowded with Shiites elsewhere in the capital leaving 88 dead — the bloodiest attack in two months.

The first blast occurred when a parked car bomb exploded near the Finance Ministry, which is run by Bayan Jabr, a Shiite and former interior minister. One civilian was killed and four other people were wounded, including a ministry guard, police said.

A bomb planted under a car exploded about 45 minutes later in the predominantly Shiite commercial district of Karradah in downtown Baghdad, killing four people, including a woman and a 7-year-old boy, and wounding seven other people, police said.

The blast collapsed part of the wall of a brick building, leaving a ground floor apartment exposed and a mass of rubble and mangled cars in the alley.

"Why are the insurgents detonating bombs near our houses every day? Everyday we have a blast, what have we done wrong? May Allah curse everybody who hurts the people," an unidentified elderly woman shrouded in black said as she stood amid the wreckage.

The attacks have battered Shiites during one of their holiest festivals and were the latest in a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgent violence before a U.S.-Iraqi push to secure Baghdad. The first of the 21,000 extra U.S. troops being sent to help quell the violence have started to arrive in Baghdad.

In other developments:

The U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday that men allegedly wearing uniforms of the Iraqi security forces abducted a group of 17 Palestinian refugees from a building rented by the agency in Baghdad. "UNHCR is very concerned and is seeking information on the Palestinians' whereabouts from Iraqi authorities," the agency's spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters. Some of the Palestinians were later released.

The U.S. military in Baghdad said Tuesday it was investigating what appeared to be the crash of a civilian aircraft after reports a helicopter was shot down over a volatile Sunni area in the capital. The military said it had no evidence any U.S. forces aircraft were involved but was investigating "what appears to be a crashed civilian aircraft." A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way, said there was no indication any U.S. Embassy staff or diplomats were on the aircraft.

An al Qaeda-linked coalition of Sunni insurgents also claimed its fighters shot down an American military helicopter in a Saturday crash that killed 12 U.S. soldiers. The U.S. military has said the cause of the crash has not been determined. In Washington, a senior military official said investigators found debris near the scene of the helicopter crash that could be part of a shoulder-fired weapon.