A deadly month for U.S. forces

BAGHDAD â€”  Five American troops were killed in fighting in Al Anbar province, the U.S. military said Thursday, bringing to at least 96 the number slain this month -- the bloodiest since October 2005. Meanwhile, American troops in the capital continued searching for a comrade believed kidnapped this week.

Elsewhere, gunmen attacked Iraqi security forces north of the capital in Baqubah and outlying villages in what appeared to be coordinated strikes against police. At least 34 police officers were killed and 10 wounded in a series of attacks and ambushes. As many as 50 officers are missing, local authorities said.

And in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, authorities closed one of the most sacred Shiite Muslim shrines in the country after a tip that explosives had reportedly been smuggled into the city. Shopkeepers were asked to close and leave and cars were banned near the Imam Ali shrine, police said.

The five U.S. troops died Wednesday, the military said in a statement. One was a sailor assigned to the 3rd Naval Construction Regiment, two were Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 and two were Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7.

More than one-third of the U.S. deaths this month have occurred in Al Anbar, a predominantly Sunni Arab province stretching from outside Baghdad to the border with Jordan.

The deadliest month for U.S. troops in the 3 1/2 -year conflict was November 2004, when American forces invaded the Al Anbar city of Fallouja. That month, 137 American troops died, 126 of them in combat, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks coalition casualties.

In October 2005, 96 U.S. military personnel were killed.

Violence in Iraq usually increases during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting and atonement that just ended. At least 300 Iraqi soldiers were killed during Ramadan this year, U.S. officials said.

Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Thursday that there had been fewer killings in the capital in the last few days but offered no data to support his statement. On Thursday, the bodies of seven Iraqi men were found in various parts of the capital. All had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

This week, American troops have flooded certain parts of Baghdad searching for the missing U.S. soldier, an Iraqi American linguist working with a reconstruction team. During a rare raid into Sadr City on Wednesday, troops received intelligence that the soldier was being held at a nearby mosque, which they then searched. He wasn’t there.

The soldier, who has not been named, was thought to have been kidnapped while visiting a relative in Baghdad’s Karada neighborhood during Eid al-Fitr celebrations that mark the end of Ramadan, the military said. He was last seen Monday afternoon inside Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone.

During a weekly news conference in the Green Zone, Caldwell said increased checkpoints and roadblocks and more U.S. troops on the streets of Baghdad taking part in the search might have helped decrease the number of killings in recent days.

But if Baghdad was relatively quiet Thursday, several battles raged north of the capital in troubled Diyala province.

Police officers from the city of Khan Bani Saad set out to raid a nearby village, Muradiya, in search of colleagues who had been recently kidnapped. Gunmen ambushed the officers outside the village, and fierce fighting followed. A colonel and at least 27 other police officers were killed, local police said. About 50 other officers were missing, but it was unclear whether they had fled or been kidnapped.

The ambush coincided with several other attacks against police in the area that left six officers dead and 10 injured.

Tribal warfare, kidnappings and killings by Al Qaeda-affiliated groups and attacks by the Al Madhi army, a Shiite Muslim militia, continue to plague the province.

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Times staff writer Suhail Ahmad in Baghdad, special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf and a special correspondent in Baqubah contributed to this report.