Seven US troops were killed in three roadside bombings near Baghdad, the military said yesterday, making October the bloodiest month for Americans in Iraq since January.

In the far west, where US Marines have been fighting for months to stem a flow of foreign Arab fighters and funds from Syria, local doctors and tribal leaders accused American forces of killing some 40 civilians in an air strike.

The military said it knew of no civilian deaths and believed it had killed an al-Qaida leader targeted by precision bombing.

Two roadside bombings near Baghdad yesterday killed six soldiers and the military also announced the death of a Marine, who was killed by a similar device near Falluja on Sunday.

That made October, which saw Iraqis vote for a constitution and put Saddam Hussein on trial, the worst month the Americans have suffered since January, when violence surged in advance of a parliamentary election.

No details were available on the 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 2,025 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 kilometers to the north of the capital.

It brought to 92 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.

Syrian border

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 yesterday, US aircraft bombed a house close to Karabila before dawn in what the military said was a precision strike on an al-Qaida 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.

(China Daily November 1, 2005)