Eight more US soldiers killed; Gunmen dressed as Iraqi soldiers kill 15 (Kurds)

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Eight more US soldiers killed in Iraq

2 hours, 1 minute ago

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Eight more American troops were killed In Iraq, seven of them on a single day, the US military said Saturday, amid raging violence and a desperate search for three captured soldiers.

Three US soldiers were killed Friday when their vehicle was bit by a bomb northeast of Baghdad, and two more in an ambush inside the city in which a gunmen opened fire on a patrol already hit by a roadside booby-trap

Another soldier died in combat in western Iraq, one was shot dead while on foot patrol in Baghdad and the eighth was killed on Saturday by a roadside bomb south of the capital that wounded two US and two Iraqi troops.

The deaths brought total US casualties since the March 2003 invasion to 3,412 and the total deaths in May to 69, keeping it on course to be one of the bloodiest months of the war for American forces so far.

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Gunmen dressed as Iraqi soldiers kill 15

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms shot and killed 15 men Saturday in a Kurdish Shiite village northeast of Baghdad and a U.S. soldier was killed and another seriously wounded while searching for three comrades missing for a week after an ambush.

In Baghdad, at least three mortar shells or rockets slammed into the Green Zone after British Prime Minister Tony Blair had arrived for talks with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. One person was injured, but it was unclear how far Blair was from the blasts.

The attack against the villagers occurred early Saturday when gunmen wearing army uniforms entered the village of Hamid Shifi, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. They rousted families from their homes and opened fire on the men, killing 15 of them, an Iraqi general and a Kurdish political party said.

The victims were Kurdish Shiites, according to a statement posted on the Web site of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

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Kurds massacred as Blair visits Iraq

by Dave Clark 1 hour, 3 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended his decision to back the invasion of Iraq on Saturday as his last visit to the war-torn country was marred by the massacre of 16 Kurdish villagers.

Blair's arrival in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone was heralded by a salvo of mortars, which wounded one person, in the latest in a spate of bloody attacks on the seat of US, British and Iraqi government power.

Standing alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, a defiant Blair insisted that there are signs of political progress towards a peaceful settlement of the four-year-old conflict.

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