Military: 7 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq

Friends and relatives take part in the funeral procession for Marwan Ja'afar, in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, May 20, 2007. Marwan Ja'afar, a prominent soccer player, was killed in an mortar attack. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) (Khalid Mohammed - AP)

In another political setback, the leader of Iraq's largest Shiite party, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, has been diagnosed with lung cancer and was headed to Iran for treatment, party officials said Sunday. Al-Hakim's absence is likely to create disarray in his Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq _ a Shiite party the U.S. is counting on to push through benchmark reforms.

News of al-Hakim's diagnosis came only hours after another top Iraqi leader, President Jalal Talabani, flew to the U.S. for a medical checkup. The 73-year-old Kurdish leader was hospitalized in Jordan three months ago after collapsing.

Talabani has played an important role in trying to bridge the gap between Sunni Arabs and Shiites, and his absence is also likely to complicate efforts to forge national unity.

In the latest violence, at least 55 people were killed or found dead Sunday, including 24 people found slain execution-style in Baghdad. Nineteen of them were recovered in western areas of Baghdad, where the U.S.-led security crackdown has failed so far to halt sectarian death squads.

A suicide bomber exploded a tanker truck near an Iraqi police checkpoint outside a market west of Baghdad, killing at least two officers and injuring nine people, police said. Police said they suspected chlorine gas was used in the attack in a town just outside the turbulent city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. But the U.S. military said it had no reports chlorine was used.

A bomb planted under a parked car exploded near a Shiite mosque in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Bab al-Sharji, police said. The blast killed two civilians, wounded 10 and damaged nearby houses and the mosque, police said.

Several hours later, a mortar shell landed in a commercial area in central Baghdad, killing one person and wounding three, police said.

Also Sunday, a U.S. spokesman said troops killed a Shiite extremist believed to have masterminded a brazen January attack in Karbala in which four U.S. soldiers were killed.

Azhar al-Duleimi was killed Friday in a raid in north Baghdad, Maj. Gen., William Caldwell told CNN's "Late Edition." Caldwell said U.S. troops had been pursuing al-Duleimi "relentlessly" since the Jan. 20 attack, in which English-speaking gunmen wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons attacked a joint military command headquarters in Karbala.

The attackers killed one soldier and abducted four others, later shooting them all to death.

"You know, anybody who kidnaps an American soldier and murders them, we're going to continue to hunt down. And that's exactly what we've been doing with this guy," Caldwell said of al-Duleimi.

Caldwell spoke as thousands of soldiers continue their search for three comrades abducted in a May 12 ambush south of Baghdad. Four other U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi were killed.

Meanwhile, two U.S. Republican senators said Sunday at the conference in Jordan that the U.S. has evidence Iran sent weapons and trainers to instruct militants in Iraq to carry out terror attacks there.

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah told a panel discussion on Iraq's future that during a trip last week to Iraq, he saw "evidence that Iran was supplying weapons and bomb-making components to Iraqi terrorists."

A former Iranian government official, who was on the same panel as Hatch, denied the claims, saying his country was falling prey to a "barrage of accusations" from the U.S. since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

"Iraq is already so full of arms that it doesn't need arms from Iran," said hard-liner Mohammed J.A. Larijani, a former deputy foreign minister and brother to Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani.

But Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon told the same panel he saw "confiscated Iranian weapons" and captured Iranians who confessed to a mission to train Iraqi extremists in military tactics.

Neither senator elaborated on their claims.