Iraq

Car bomb in Baghdad kills 4 Iraqis, injures 25

BAGHDAD - A powerful car bomb killed four Iraqis and wounded about 25 in downtown Baghdad on Monday, while two U.S. soldiers were killed in clashes with insurgent Shiite militiamen that persisted despite a ragged truce around the sacred city of Najaf.

The bombing, in Baghdad's Harthiya neighborhood, blasted a 10-foot-wide crater in the street. It occurred about a mile from the U.S. checkpoint where Izzedin Saleem, then occupying the rotating presidency of the Governing Council, was killed May 17 in a similar suicide bombing as his motorcade waited to enter the U.S. occupation headquarters.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said clashes erupted twice Sunday night in Kufa, which adjoins Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, between patrolling U.S. soldiers and militiamen loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite Muslim cleric whose Mahdi Army has been challenging U.S. authority in the Shiite region for the last month. Another confrontation erupted Monday evening when Mahdi Army fighters attacked a U.S. convoy on the edge of Kufa, said Qais Khazali, a Sadr spokesman in Najaf.

Kimmitt said two U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday. Two Mahdi Army fighters were killed Monday, Khazali said.

The military honored its war dead in Memorial Day ceremonies across Iraq.

"When we return to our home stations, we must ensure that we never forget those fallen comrades that deployed with us that will not return to their loved ones," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, said at Baghdad's Camp Victory. "We must not walk away from this mission."

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