At Least 69 Killed in Attacks Across Iraq

In Iraq's other oil hub, the southern city of Basra, a bomb mounted on a motorcycle killed seven people, authorities said. Maliki, the prime minister, has imposed a state of emergency to deal with the deadly rivalry among the Shiite factions controlling the south.

Another of the day's major attacks was in Baghdad, where a bomb in a minibus killed nine people at a police checkpoint on Sadoun Street, in the center of the city near the Palestine Hotel, police said.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that seven Iraqi civilians were killed Sunday night in what Johnson said was a street battle between American forces and insurgents in Baghdad.

It began when a bomb exploded near American troops in a Stryker armored vehicle in the mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighborhood of Ghaziliyah, a district where U.S. forces have beefed up their presence in an effort to quell sectarian violence.

Insurgents opened fire with grenade launchers and guns after the bomb hit the Stryker, Johnson said. U.S. forces returned fire, wounding four attackers, whom Americans took into custody, Johnson said. He said it appeared the civilians had been caught in the cross-fire.

A resident at the scene gave a different account, saying all seven, including a family of five traveling together, were killed when U.S. forces opened fire on cars around their vehicle following the bombing.

Also in Baghdad, three American soldiers were killed, two by roadside bombs and one by insurgent gunfire, the U.S. military said. [Early Monday, the Associated Press reported that four U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday in another roadside bombing, according to U.S. military.]

In Baghdad in particular, the toll reflected the growing aggressiveness of the militias loyal to Iraq's governing Shiite religious parties as they try to crush the country's Sunni insurgency.

U.S. military leaders stepped up American deployments and patrols in Baghdad. U.S. commanders also abruptly extended the stay of one Alaska-based brigade that had been headed home and called in emergency reserves from Kuwait.

U.S. military leaders have credited their crackdown in Baghdad with what they say is a reduction in the number of deaths in Iraq in recent weeks.

"The violence is in decrease and our security ability is increasing," Maliki said on CNN's "Late Edition" program. Multinational forces have created an atmosphere of "reconciliation" in the country, Maliki said, and "Iraq will never be in a civil war."

Maliki's spokesman, Ali Debagh, confirmed Sunday that the prime minister was shuffling the cabinet in his three-month-old government of Shiite religious parties, Kurds and Sunnis.

Debagh said at least one and probably two of the ministers to be replaced belong to the movement of populist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr commands a militia increasingly accused of taking a lead in killings of Sunnis.

Debagh played down the idea that the shuffle was largely a purge of Sadr supporters. Debagh said Sadr "is more and more coming to work as a political force" within the government while disavowing his militia.

Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.