U.S. Presses Attack on al-Qaida in Iraq

Iraqis view the damaged Khillani mosque, a main Shiite mosque in central Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, June 19, 2007. A truck bomb struck a Shiite mosque Tuesday in central Baghdad, killing 75 people and wounding more than 200, even as about 10,000 U.S. soldiers northeast of the capital used heavily armored Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles to battle their way into an al-Qaida sanctuary. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) (Hadi Mizban - AP)

"It's clear that there is an attempt to get lucky shots and there is unquestionably an increasing pattern of attacks here against the International Zone. There's no doubt about that," he said.

At least one mortar or rocket could be heard exploding in the zone Wednesday.

Battles also continued south of Baghdad between Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Four soldiers were killed and a Humvee was burned in nearly two hours of fighting in the Shiite town of Numaniyah, 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said. The fighting erupted hours after five other Iraqi soldiers were killed and three were wounded by a roadside bomb in the mainly Sunni town of Madain, on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad.

Farther south, the U.S. military said three militants had been killed, including a senior leader of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and 45 detained after two days of clashes in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. Iraqi police and hospital officials put the casualty toll at 35 killed and 150 wounded.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed and four were wounded in a roadside bombing Wednesday southwest of Baghdad, the military said Thursday. The deaths raised to at least 3,533 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A British soldier died Wednesday after an attack on a military facility in the southern city of Basra, the British defense ministry said in London.

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Associated Press writers Kim Gamel, Sinan Salaheddin and Bushra Juhi in Baghdad contributed to this report, as did AP employees in Baqouba.