U.S. military announces 7 troops killed in action

Gen. David Petraeus is expected to tell lawmakers he wants to maintain the troop buildup until next spring.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military on Friday announced the deaths of seven more American troops in combat, including four in Anbar province, the Sunni stronghold where U.S. officials say a tribal revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq has brought dramatic improvements in security.

Two of Iraq’s top political leaders, meanwhile, raised objections to the planned execution of three former Saddam Hussein lieutenants convicted of massacring Kurds in the late 1980s.

A U.S. statement said four Marines assigned to Multinational Force-West were killed Thursday in combat in Anbar, but gave no further details.

Three soldiers from the Army’s Task Force Lightning died Thursday when a bomb exploded near their vehicle in Ninevah, a northern province that includes Iraq’s third-largest city Mosul, the military also said.

Those deaths raised to at least 3,760 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Britain’s Defense Ministry also announced Friday that a British soldier was killed two days earlier, but news of the death was kept secret for security reasons. The British statement did not say how or where the soldier died.

The U.S. statement did not say where the Marines were killed in Anbar, a vast, mostly desert province that extends from the western outskirts of Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Declaration

On Monday, President Bush declared Anbar “one of the safest places in Iraq” after many Sunni tribal sheiks broke with al-Qaida in Iraq and threw their support to U.S. efforts to pacify the province.

U.S. officers say Anbar is far from secure. But the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, is expected to point to a dramatic drop in violence there when he reports to Congress next week on the situation in Iraq after this year’s troop buildup.

Petraeus is expected to tell lawmakers he wants to maintain the troop buildup here until next spring to bolster the security gains achieved in Anbar and elsewhere.

Previewing a widely anticipated report to Congress, the top U.S. commander in Iraq says some troop withdrawals may be possible next spring, and the troop buildup of recent months has failed to yield political reform in Baghdad.