Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

4 Americans killed in offensive

Operation River Gate seeks to retake three towns in western Iraq, but many insurgents may have already slipped away.

HADITHA, Iraq - U.S. troops pushed through streets sown with bombs Tuesday in their biggest operation this year in western Iraq, seeking to retake three Euphrates River towns from al-Qaida insurgents. At least four U.S. service members have been killed in the fighting.

Operation River Gate - launched at the start of the holy month of Ramadan - was the second U.S. offensive in a week in Anbar province, near the Syrian border.

Al-Qaida in Iraq called for intensified attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces during the Muslim period of fasting, which started Tuesday for the nation's Sunnis.

Blasts from U.S. warplanes and helicopters lit up the sky during the fighting, aimed at putting down Sunni-led insurgents intensifying their campaign of violence ahead of an Oct. 15 vote on Iraq's new constitution.

As with the earlier U.S. offensive - code named Iraq Fist - it appeared many fighters may have slipped away.

On the political front, U.S. and U.N. officials were trying to avert a Sunni Arab boycott of the referendum, which would deeply undermine the validity of a constitution Washington hopes will unite Iraq's factions and weaken the insurgency.

Officials met Tuesday with Shiite and Kurdish leaders to persuade them to reverse the Shiite-led government's last-minute change to voting rules ahead of the Oct. 15 vote. Sunday's change makes it almost impossible for minority Sunnis to reject the constitution - all guaranteeing its passage.

Sunni Arab leaders have opposed the draft constitution all along, but the United States wants them to participate in the vote.

Late Monday and early Tuesday, some 2,500 U.S. troops along with Iraqi forces launched their operation with a powerful air assault on Haditha, Haqlaniyah and Parwana, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.

A single roadside bomb in Haqlaniyah on Monday killed three U.S. service members, apparently among the first ground troops to move in.

Besides the three troops who died in Haqlaniyah, a Marine was killed Monday by a roadside bomb in Karabilah, the U.S. military reported. The soldier was the first reported U.S. death in Operation Iron Fist.

Another U.S. soldier died from a gunshot wound in the western town of Taqaddum on Monday, the military said. The cause of the shooting death was under investigation.