7 US soldiers among 70 killed in Iraq
Foreign Desk Report

BAGHDAD—Seven US soldiers were killed in two bomb attacks around Baghdad on Monday and in the far west there were angry accusations of civilian deaths in a US air strike that targeted al Qaeda fighters coming in from Syria.
The roadside bombings made October, which saw Iraqis vote for a constitution and put Saddam Hussein on trial, as bloody a month as the Americans have suffered since January, when violence surged in advance of a parliamentary election.
No details were available on the two attacks but US commanders have been voicing increasing concern at the power and sophistication of roadside bombs, the biggest killers of their troops; devices capable of penetrating armored vehicles have become more common this year, based on technology US and British officials say has been introduced from Iran.
A week after the US death toll since the 2003 invasion passed the 2,000 mark, it rose to at least 2,018 with the deaths of four soldiers in an attack on a patrol near Yusufiya, just south of Baghdad, and two in a similar incident near Balad, 60 km (40 miles) to the north of the capital.
It brought to 85 the number of Americans to die in October, the same as in August and the highest since 107 died in January. Sunni Arab guerrilla violence against US forces and the Shi’ite-led government they are protecting is particularly intense around Baghdad and the Sunni-dominated areas to the west and north; US commanders say Sunni farmlands just south of the capital provide discreet bases for insurgents in Baghdad.
Suicide bombers, like one who lured Shi’ite townsfolk to their deaths on Saturday with an exploding truck full of dates that killed 30, are believed often to be foreigners, brought in through Syria.
Near the border city of Qaim on Monday, US aircraft bombed a house close to Karabila before dawn in what the military said was a precision strike on an al Qaeda leader.
A local hospital doctor in the Iraqi town of Qaim said 40 people were killed and 20 wounded, many of them women and children, and a tribal leader said no guerrillas were there. A US military spokesman said the precision bombing in Karabila, close to Qaim, was meant to avoid civilian casualties.
“We believe the targeted terrorist leader was killed but we cannot confirm that,” Colonel David Lapan said. “Civilian deaths cannot be verified and hospital officials frequently make such claims”.
US and Iraqi officials describe Qaim and the Euphrates Valley running southeast from the Syrian border as a prime channel for foreign Islamist fighters heading for Baghdad. “The Americans started to bomb around Betha from after midnight (2100 GMT) until dawn,” said a police officer, reached by telephone, who asked not to be named for his own security.
He did not know the number of casualties who were taken from the village of Betha, outside Karabila, to Qaim hospital. At the hospital, doctor Ammar al-Marsoumi said he believed 40 civilians were killed and 20 wounded; rescuers were still trying to remove bodies from the rubble, he added.
Another doctor at the hospital, Ahmed al-Ani, later said 42 bodies had been brought in after air strikes, including women and children. Mohammad al-Karbouli, a local tribal leader said of the site of the air strike: “There are no insurgents in this area, they are all harmless families”.
US spokesman Lapan said: “The only air strike in that area ... of which I am aware is an attack on a terrorist safe house in Karabila that occurred before dawn this morning. “A senior al Qaeda cell leader was the target of the strike. The timing of the attack and use of precision-guided munitions is intended to avoid civilian casualties”. US marines have mounted several offensives against their strongholds in the area over the past few months.