Roadside bomb kills 10 Marines, injures 11

The kidnappers of four Christian peace activists threatened to kill the hostages.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A roadside bomb killed 10 Marines and wounded 11 others on a foot patrol near Fallujah, the U.S. military announced Friday. It was the deadliest attack against American troops in four months.
The ambush occurred Thursday against Marines from Regimental Combat Team 8, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The Marine unit has suffered some of the highest casualties of the Iraq war.
The unit's latest losses were among 14 new deaths in Iraq announced by the military Friday. With at least 793 American lives lost since January, 2005 appears on track to become the deadliest year for the troops since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. There were 846 deaths in 2004, and 485 the previous year.
The military statement said seven of the wounded later returned to duty and that the rest of the team was conducting "counterinsurgency operations throughout Fallujah and the surrounding area" to improve security for the Dec. 15 elections.
Other fatalities
Also Friday, three U.S. soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team were killed in a traffic accident south of Baghdad, and the military said an Army soldier assigned to the 2nd Marine Division died of wounds suffered the previous day when his vehicle was struck by a rocket in Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital.
Names of the victims were not released pending notification of their families. The statement also did not give the precise location of the attack -- the single deadliest against U.S. troops in Iraq since 14 Marines were killed Aug. 3 when a bomb destroyed their vehicle near Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Maj. Cliff W. Gilmore, a spokesman at Camp Lejeune for the II Marine Expeditionary Force, said the victims of Thursday's ambush probably came from hometowns across the country rather than from one area.
"Here at Camp Lejeune, we pause; we stop; we feel it, and then we carry out with the mission," Gilmore said. "Those folks in Iraq, they probably didn't even have time to pause and think about it. ... The folks that are on patrol right now might not have even heard of it."
Kidnappers' threats
Meanwhile, the kidnappers of four Christian peace activists threatened to kill the hostages unless all prisoners in U.S. and Iraqi detention centers are released, according to a videotape broadcast Friday by Al-Jazeera television.
The tape showed what the broadcaster said were two Canadian hostages. An American and a Briton are also being held. The kidnappers gave the two governments until Dec. 8 to meet their demands, Al-Jazeera quoted a statement delivered with the tape as saying.
The Canadians were shown eating from plates of what appeared to be Arabic sweets. In a second clip, the British and American hostages were shown to talking to the camera, but no audio was transmitted. All four men appeared frightened.
The hostages called on the U.S. and British governments to withdraw from Iraq, Al-Jazeera reported, quoting a statement from the kidnappers, who earlier identified themselves as the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, a previously unknown group.
Newspaper propaganda
In another development, the U.S. military acknowledged Friday that it has been using third parties to buy advertising space in Iraqi newspapers for articles designed to counter enemy propaganda.
But a senior Republican senator said he was told at a Pentagon briefing that some of the stories weren't identified as having been paid for by the U.S. military.
The paid-for news articles and allegations that the U.S. Army has been paying Iraqi journalists to produce upbeat reports about the U.S.-led effort to crush the Sunni Muslim insurgency have ignited concerns in Washington about harm to U.S. credibility. U.S. efforts to nurture democracy in Iraq include the development of an independent free press.
The U.S. military command in Baghdad said that articles have been offered "for publication to Iraqi newspapers, and in some cases articles have been accepted and published as a function of buying advertising and opinion/editorial space, as is customary in Iraq."
U.S. defense officials have said that The Lincoln Group, a Washington-based defense contractor, has been used to place the materials.