Four US soldiers and two members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in separate insurgent attacks in Baghdad and near the southern city of Amara, a senior military official said today.
The deaths take to 545 the number of US troops killed since the US invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. More US soldiers were killed during the month of April than during the three-week war that ousted Saddam.
In the latest attacks, two US soldiers and two members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps were killed early this morning in northwest Baghdad, the official said.
Two more US troops were killed near Amara yesterday when their convoy came under fire from small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade.
Yesterday, three British soldiers and an Iraqi policemen were wounded in a rare clash between British forces and the Mehdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Amara, 365 km south of Baghdad following a swoop.
A British military spokesman said numerous individuals had been arrested in a raid which netted "significant amounts of arms, explosives and bomb-making equipment."
He said British forces sustained a number of casualties in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a convoy in the town. A British officer at the scene said three soldiers were wounded, one seriously.