9 US Troops Killed in Iraq: US Death Toll Stands at 720

BAGHDAD: So far at least 59 Iraqis including nine US troops killed in fresh bloodshed, while one hunredn or so have been injured.

According to details suicide bombers targeted oil installations in Iraq as violence claimed the lives of 47 people, including eight US soldiers, and a US general warned that his troops were poised to resume an offensive on insurgents in the flashpoint city of Fallujah.

The deadly incidents occurred both in the Sunni Muslim north of the country and in Shiite dominated areas, including the volatile Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City.

Two US crew members were killed and four others wounded as a result of three concurrent waterborne attacks on oil terminals located in the northern Gulf, the US navy said.

They died when the small craft were trying to board exploded. They had intercepted the dhow near the Khor Al-Amaya Oil Terminal in the northern Gulf.

In all, three suicide boats were prevented from reaching Iraq's two main oil terminals. However, the incidents still halted the loading of crude as one of the vessels exploded near an oil facility and another near a tanker, officials said.

In Basra, police arrested three Iraqis suspected in a series of suicide attacks in British-occupied southern Iraq that killed 74 people on Wednesday.

They also seized a truck loaded with explosives.

In Taji, just north of Baghdad, four US soldiers were killed and seven wounded, three of them critically, when a rocket was fired at their base at dawn, according to a military statement.

Another two US soldiers were killed and one wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a convoy near the southern city of Kut, police said.

The latest casualties, when added to the US military toll, brought to 720 the American deaths since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March last year, including at least 519 killed in action, most of them fighting insurgents.

Fourteen Iraqis died and 11 were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their bus near Iskandariyah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad, hospital officials said.

A booby-trapped car exploded near a US military base in the northern city of Tikrit, killing four Iraqi policemen.

Sadr City, where militant Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr draws much of his support, saw four separate attacks killed at least 14 people and wounded 36, according to hospital staff.

"There was a mortar attack that would appear to have been aimed at the old cigarette factory where coalition forces are occupied," said US Brigadier
General Mark Kimmitt. "It did not hit the coalition but it did hit some citizens in Sadr City," said Kimmitt, who is deputy operations director for the US-led coalition.

Sadr is holed up in the southern city of Najaf. He is wanted in connection with the murder of a rival cleric last year, warned Friday that his supporters would carry out suicide attacks if US troops entered Shiite holy cities.

Also in the holy city of Najaf, an Iraqi civilian was burned alive in his vehicle after it came under fire near a coalition base, according to hospital sources.

The base, manned by Spanish soldiers, was attacked by eight mortar bombs vernight and that troops returned fire, a coalition spokesman said.

Near another holy city, Karbala, five insurgents who were preparing an ambush were killed by a Polish patrol, a coalition spokesman said.

In the Sunni stronghold inside Fallujah, under a three-week-old siege by US Marines, a two-year-old boy died when shells and bullets hit his family's house, according to a relative and a nurse.

Each side has accused the other of breaching the ceasefire and Kimmitt warned that US Marines were ready to go back on the offensive if the truce is not honored. He said up to 2,000 insurgents, including foreign fighters and loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, were holed up in the city.

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