6 Marines Killed In Iraq Attacks

[David]

AP


Roadside bombs hit U.S. patrols in western Iraq, killing six Marines who were part of operations that began a week ago to clear towns of insurgents prior to a crucial referendum on a new constitution, the military said Friday.

The American deaths raised to at least 1,950 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Four of the Marines were killed Thursday by a roadside bomb while Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), was conducting combat operations near Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, the military said.

Farther to the west, near the Syrian border, the other two Marines were killed Thursday by a roadside bomb near the town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, while on patrol during the U.S. "Iron Fist" offensive, the military said. They were with the Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward).

"Iron Fist" and another offensive codenamed "River Gate" began earlier this month and involved thousands of U.S. forces and Iraqi troops to uproot insurgents from Qaim and several other towns in western Iraq before the Oct. 15 referendum.

In other developments:


The U.S. has obtained a 13-page letter written by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq.

A suicide bomber boarded a minibus packed with 14 passengers ? officers going to the police academy and students and workers headed home to Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City. The bomber, seated by the driver, set off his explosives belt as the bus passed a police patrol. At least nine people were killed and nine wounded.


Coalition forces found two weapons caches, one in Haqlaniyah and one in Haditha, of more than 40 mortar and artillery rounds, two mortar systems, small-arms and thousands of rounds of ammunition, the military said.


Defending his Iraq policy in the face of declining public support, President Bush accused Islamic militants of making Iraq the main front in their plan to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world."

A U.S. offensive aimed at uprooting al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents in western Iraq before next week's constitutional referendum killed 29 militants, including 20 who died when warplanes bombed an abandoned hotel they had commandeered, the military said Friday.

The fighting occurred Thursday during one of two offensives being conducted by thousands of U.S. troops and hundreds of Iraqi soldiers in several Euphrates River towns that insurgents were virtually controlling after the withdrawal of most Iraqi police and soldiers.

Elsewhere, residents in Baghdad and other cities were receiving copies of Iraq's draft constitution, though some refused to take it and some shopkeepers balked at passing it out, fearing reprisals by militants determined to wreck the crucial Oct. 15 referendum.

"Some people are excited to take it. Others are refusing to touch it," Mohammed Ali, a shopkeeper in western Baghdad who handed out about 150, said Friday.

"I know some merchants who have refused to accept copies for distribution because they fear retaliation by the insurgents," Ali said in an interview at his shop.

The constitution is being distributed at such stores through Iraq's rationing system for food because some 80 percent of Iraqis have been enrolled in it since the days of U.N. sanctions against Saddam Hussein. About 5 million copies of the constitution arrived in Iraq on Monday, but distribution does not appear to have started in the north and south, where the charter is expected to pass by a wide margin.

As many Iraqis prepared to attend services at their local mosques on Friday, the Muslim day of worship, they once again were bombarded with advertisements on state-run Al-Iraqiya television and satellite channels encouraging them to vote in next week's referendum.

On many streets in Baghdad, posters attached to shop walls and concrete barriers guarding against car bomb bombs by insurgents carried pro-referendum slogans such as "It is your constitution. It is your future. It is your decision."

Al-Iraqiya TV also was carrying talk shows during which ordinary Iraqis and intellectuals debated the constitution, some of them calling it unfair to minority Sunnis.

U.S. and Iraqi officials had hoped the drafting of the constitution would unite the country's disparate factions; instead, it has sharply divided them. While Shiite and Kurdish leaders overwhelmingly support the charter, moderate Sunni Arab leaders are urging their followers to vote "no," hoping to defeat a constitution they say will fragment Iraq.

Many Iraqis also know that Al Qaeda in Iraq recently used Web sites and Arabic-language satellite TV stations to demand that Iraqis boycott the referendum and to call for increased attacks during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began this week. In the past 12 days alone, more than 290 people have been killed in attacks, many of them Shiites.