Iraq Developments Reported Thursday

-- _ Mahdi Army fighters said they were under siege in their Sadr City stronghold as U.S. and Iraqi troops killed or seized key commanders in pinpoint nighttime raids. Two commanders of the Shiite militia said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has stopped protecting the group under pressure from Washington and threats from Sunni Muslim Arab governments.

_ Police reported a total of 59 people killed or found dead, with the single largest toll from a triple car bombing that killed 10 in a wholesale vegetable market in a south Baghdad Shiite neighborhood. Twenty-seven bodies were found dumped in Baghdad, 19 on the largely Sunni west side of the Tigris, eight on the mainly Shiite east bank.

_ Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged the support of House Democrats for legislation declaring that President Bush's decision to send additional troops to Iraq is "not in the national interest of the United States." Pelosi's commitment came as Senate Democrats said they intend to begin advancing a nonbinding measure next week that criticizes the White House's new strategy.

_ An Iranian offer to help the United States stabilize Iraq and end its military support for Hezbollah and Hamas was rejected by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003, a former top State Department official told the British Broadcasting Corp.

_ More than 100 former members of Saddam Hussein's regime will stand trial this year in connection with the deaths of tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims during an uprising after the 1991 Gulf War, prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said.

_ An al-Qaida-linked coalition of Iraqi Sunni insurgents claimed responsibility for an attack on a convoy of a Western democracy institute that killed an American woman along with three security contractors in Baghdad. The Washington-based National Democratic Institute identified its slain staffer as Andrea Parhamovich, 28, of Perry, Ohio.

_ A Marine corporal pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering an unarmed Iraqi civilian last year, and said his sergeant made sure the victim was dead by firing a burst of gunfire into the man's head.

_ The second of five 101st Airborne Division soldiers accused of raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl along with executing three of her family members last year in Iraq has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, his attorney said.

_ The U.S. military acknowledged that coalition forces searched the Sudanese Embassy in Baghdad, saying the search was "part of an operation in the general vicinity that was aimed at denying insurgents safe haven to carry out attacks against Iraqi security forces and Iraqi citizens."

_ Dozens of backers of Saddam's outlawed Baath party marched in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad to protest the former leader's execution and show support for his fugitive deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who is said to have taken command of the insurgency.