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Momentum belongs to U.S., official says

BAGHDAD - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage insisted Saturday the U.S. military has the upper hand in the escalating war in Iraq, on a day when two paratroopers died in a roadside ambush.

Armitage described Iraq as a "war zone," but noted "we have the momentum in this process."

"I'm absolutely convinced we have a very solid plan to go out and get these people who are killing us and killing Iraqis," he said.

Two soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division died Saturday when a homemade bomb exploded beside their vehicle in Fallujah, a center of Sunni Muslim resistance 40 miles west of Baghdad, the military said.

Their deaths brought to 35 the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq this month.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein's government is believed to have buried as many as 300,000 opponents in 263 mass graves that dot the Iraqi landscape, the top human rights official in the U.S.-led civilian administration said Saturday.

Sandy Hodgkinson said the administration has been sending forensic teams to investigate those grave sites reported to U.S. officials. The existence of about 40 graves has been confirmed.

"We have found mass graves with women and children with bullet holes in their heads," she said.

Some human rights activists have criticized the U.S.-led administration in Iraq for moving too slowly to protect grave sites and begin excavations.

"There is just no way - technologically, financially - that they're going to deal with mass graves on this magnitude," said Susannah Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights in Boston.

The U.S.-led administration held a workshop Saturday to train dozens of Iraqis to find and protect the mass grave sites.

BEAVER FALLS, Pa. - An Army sergeant killed in a missile attack as he was returning home for his mother's funeral was buried along with her Saturday.

More than 200 family members and friends gathered at a school auditorium about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh for a double funeral for Sgt. Ernest Bucklew and his mother.

Mary Ellen Bucklew, 57, of Darlington Township, died Oct. 31 of an aneurism as she drove home from work. Her 33-year-old son was on emergency leave two days later when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in was shot down near Fallujah.

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's foreign minister said Saturday that he hoped the United States would not need his country's help to stabilize Iraq in the future, after Washington failed to persuade Iraq's governing council to accept Turkish troops.

"We hope that no need arises for our help tomorrow," Gul told private NTV television. Asked what Turkey would do if such a need arose, Gul said: "Then we sit down and consider it again."