The U.S. military said Sunday that seven U.S. troops were killed in fighting in the Baghdad area and the volatile Anbar province, west of the capital.
The most recent casualty was a soldier who was killed Sunday in Baghdad.
Two soldiers assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group and one Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 also died Saturday from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar.
Two soldiers assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) died when a roadside bomb hit their security patrol in Anbar on Saturday, the U.S. command said.
A soldier from the Multinational Corps-Iraq died of injuries sustained when his convoy was struck a roadside bomb at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday near Taji, which is 12 miles north of the capital and home to a major U.S. air base.
At least 2,894 men and women in the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
In other developments:
Saddam Hussein's lawyers Sunday appealed the death sentence handed down to the ousted Iraqi president. Five Iraqi judges on Nov. 5 sentenced Saddam and two other senior members of his regime to death by hanging for the killing of 148 people in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad. Iraq's president on Sunday rejected suggestions that an international conference be held to address the violence wracking his country, echoing sentiments expressed by other leading politicians in the wartorn country. "We are an independent and a sovereign nation and it is we who decide the fate of the nation," President Jalal Talabani said. Also denouncing the idea of an international conference on the future of Iraq is Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's top Shiite politicians. Al-Hakim meets Monday with President Bush in Washington. CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk says al-Hakim is likely to nonetheless support the idea of talks with Iran as part of the effort to stop the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq. A U.S. attack against insurgents in Anbar killed six militants, two women and a child, the military said Sunday. It was the latest of several recent raids during which women or children have been killed or wounded by U.S. forces. Stephen Hadley, the national security advisor to President Bush, said on Sunday that the president was open to some of the policy changes that outgoing defense chief Donald Rumsfeld made in a classified memo in November. "The president made clear he wanted to open the aperture, really have a re-look and look at a variety of ideas," Bush adviser Stephen Hadley said on Face The Nation. "And Secretary Rumsfeld, basically, was giving a list for consideration." The U.S. Air Force says a pilot whose F-16 fighter jet crashed north of Baghdad last week was killed in action. The Air Force says Troy Gilbert's identity was confirmed through DNA analysis of remains that were recovered at the crash site. The military had earlier classified Gilbert as "whereabouts unknown." The number of dead from Saturday's triple car bombing at a Baghdad market has risen to 53. Three parked cars blew up nearly simultaneously as shoppers were buying fruit, vegetables, meat and other items for dinner in the busy al-Sadriyah district. At least four Iraqi police officers have been killed in scattered attacks around the country Sunday. At least a dozen people have been wounded. President Jalal Talabani on Sunday rejected a suggestion for an international conference on Iraq. Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, was the second Iraqi leader in as many days to oppose the suggestion for an international conference by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, adding "We are an independent and a sovereign nation and it is we that decide the fate of the nation." Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's top Shiite politicians, said Saturday in Amman in neighboring Jordan that it would be "unrealistic" to debate Iraq's future outside the country and that Iraq's elected government was the only party qualified to find a solution to the conflict. The bullet-ridden body of the Sunni Arab chairman of one of Iraq's leading soccer clubs was found Sunday, several days after he was kidnapped in the capital, police said. Hadib Majhoul, the head of the popular Talaba club and a member of the Iraqi Soccer Federation, was seized late Thursday by gunmen in two cars who intercepted him while he was going to work, said Tariq Ahmed, an official with the federation.