Roadside Bomb Kills 5 GIs In Iraq

Five American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb during combat in the western town of Ramadi, the deadliest single attack for U.S. troops in weeks, the U.S military said Thursday.

The five soldiers, assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, were hit by the bomb while "conducting combat operations" Wednesday in the town, which is a hotbed of activity by Iraq's insurgents, a statement by the Marines said. It gave no further details.

Their deaths came a day after another soldier attached to the Marines was killed in clashes in Ramadi, 60 miles west of the capital.

Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed in violence in Iraq over the past five days. The latest deaths bring to 1,934 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Also Thursday, U.S. forces raided the homes of two officials from a prominent Sunni Arab organization Thursday, arresting bodyguards and confiscating weapons, Sunni officials said.

Sixteen Iraqis were killed in a number of shootings and other attacks in the capital Thursday, raising to more than 100 the number of people who have died in violence in Iraq this week, including seven U.S. service members.

In related developments:

A judge has ruled that pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over U.S. government claims that they could damage America's image.

A Pentagon analyst charged with providing classified information to an Israeli official and members of a pro-Israeli lobbying group will plead guilty, according to the U.S. District Court clerk's office. Lawrence A. Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W.Va., was indicted in June on charges of leaking classified materials — including information about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq — to two members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and an Israeli official.

U.S. troops could begin coming home from Iraq next year, but it depends on conditions during and after the upcoming elections there, the top U.S. commander in Iraq told Congress on Thursday. The remarks by Gen. George Casey, along with similar comments he made a day before, represented a softening of his earlier assessment that a "fairly substantial" pullout could begin next spring and summer.

In two attacks, gunmen opened fire on a Shiite bakery shop in the Dora neighborhood, killing three civilians, and on a minibus carrying government cleaners to work, killing two and wounding seven, police said. Elsewhere in the capital, two civilians and four police officers were killed in drive-by shootings, and a 12-year-old child living in a homeless shelter died when a mortar exploded nearby, police said.

North of Baghdad, three members of the Al-Khalis city council were killed by gunmen on their way home from a meeting, and an Iraqi woman was killed and three other civilians were wounded when five mortar rounds hit them in Samara city, police said.

On Wednesday, in a suicide bombing in northwestern Iraq, a woman disguised in a man's robes and headdress slipped into a line of army recruits and detonated explosives strapped to her body, killing at least six recruits and wounding 35. It was the first known suicide attack by a woman in Iraq's insurgency.

In Washington on Wednesday, U.S. President George W. Bush warned there will be an upsurge in violence in Iraq in the days leading up to the referendum. "We can expect they'll do everything in their power to try to stop the march of freedom," Bush said of the insurgents. "And our troops are ready for it."

Adnan al-Dulaimi, secretary-general of the Conference for Iraq's People, said soldiers in tanks and Humvees, with two helicopters circling overhead, broke into his home at 2:30 a.m., put him and his family in a guest room and searched the house.

"It was if they were attacking a castle, not the home of a normal person who advises Iraq's interim government and has called for reconciliation and renounced sectarianism," al-Dulaimi told a news conference after the raid in western Baghdad.

The other raid took place at the Baghdad home of Harith al-Obeidi, another senior official in the organization, said Iraq's largest Sunni political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party.

The U.S. military said it had conducted several raids in those areas of Baghdad on Thursday, but could not immediately identify the homes or Iraqis involved. The chief of Iraqi police in the district, Maj. Moussa Abdul-Karim said he heard reports of the raids after they took place but the U.S. military had not coordinated with the Iraqis.

The Conference for Iraq's People and the Iraqi Islamic Party are two leading political organizations representing Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, which has increasingly complained of abuse as U.S. and Iraqi forces pursue insurgents, the bulk of whom are Sunnis. The two groups are also campaigning to defeat a draft constitution in an Oct. 15 referendum.

Al-Dulaimi said the troops arrested four of his bodyguards and confiscated their licensed weapons. He said the Americans were acting on false tips that linked the men to the insurgency.

"This act of humiliation ... derails our efforts to encourage Sunnis to take part in the political process," said al-Dulaimi, urging the U.S. government to stop such actions.

The two organizations are urging Sunnis to participate in the referendum, but to vote "no" to the constitution, which Sunni leaders believe will divide Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni areas, with the Sunni one having the least power and revenue.

The Iraqi Islamic Party condemned the two raids as "a savage act" and an "unjustifiable aggression" saying such treatment of "good Iraqis" could set back efforts to persuade citizens to join efforts to improve security in the war-torn country.

Al-Dulaimi is a prominent critic of the Shiite-led government. On Aug. 30, at a joint news conference with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, he called for dismissing the country's Shiite interior minister, accusing his security forces of massacring Sunnis. Al-Dulaimi warned that killings against Sunnis "will only lead to troubles" at a time when U.S. officials are encouraging Sunnis to accept Iraq's draft constitution.

His call came several days after 36 Sunnis were found shot to death, execution style, in a dry riverbed near the Iranian border after they were kidnapped in Baghdad.

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