November 11, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) â€" Five American troops were killed in Iraq, including one along the Syrian border during a major push to take control of the frontier from insurgents, the U.S. military said Friday.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, meanwhile, said the government in Damascus must do more to stop foreign fighters from regularly slipping into Iraq from Syria.

In a Veterans Day speech, President Bush forcefully attacked critics of the war, saying they are undercutting American forces on the front lines.

The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges, Bush told a crowd at the Tobyhanna, Pa., Army Depot.

A roadside bomb killed the U.S. Marine on Thursday along the Syrian border in Karabilah, about 200 miles west of Baghdad, during Operation Steel Curtain, the military said.

Two U.S. soldiers died after being hit by small arms fire Thursday during combat operations in Khaldiyah, 55 miles west of Baghdad, the military said. The soldiers were members of a U.S. army unit detailed to the 2nd Marine Division, operating in western Iraq.

On Friday, two U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Corps Support Command died in a traffic accident while on a combat logistical patrol northwest of Kirkuk, the military said. Two oil tankers were destroyed in what was earlier believed to be an insurgent ambush.

The deaths brought the number of U.S. service members killed in Iraq since the war began to 2,061, according to an Associated Press count.

Three Iraqi police officers were killed Friday when their vehicle was ambushed near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, officers at a regional command center said.

Insurgents ambushed a U.S. convoy north of Baghdad, destroying two oil tankers, witnesses said.

In the capital, gunmen opened fire on the compound of the Embassy of Oman, killing two people and wounding two others â€" the second fatal shooting involving employees of Arab embassies in Baghdad this week, authorities said.

One of the dead was a policeman and the other was an embassy employee, said police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

On Wednesday, a driver for the Sudanese Embassy was shot to death in the same part of the city, and last month two employees of the Moroccan Embassy were abducted on a highway in western Iraq.

In his speech, Bush repeated a comparison he made last month about al-Qaida's leaders, saying they were like other fanatics in history such as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot.

He also said his critics were claiming the administration manipulated intelligence to mislead the country into war, but he said a Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's assessments related to Saddam Hussein's weapons program.

More than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power, Bush said.

After meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Baghdad, al-Jaafari said it was no secret that foreign fighters slip into Iraq by way of Syria, the main reason for Operation Steel Curtain.

Why do they not control their borders? al-Jaafari asked. We demand they control their borders, prevent infiltration and terrorism. We want good relations with Syria, but this cannot be achieved with the existence of such violations.

Al-Jaafari also said his government would be interested in a reconciliation conference but only if it were an Iraqi and national one and did not include terrorists. The Arab League is trying to arrange a conference, but the government and major Shiite parties have ruled out participation if former members of Saddam Hussein's party and terrorists were included.

Rice also toured the northern city of Mosul and said she wanted to talk to officials about the importance of reaching across sectarian lines.

Divisions among Iraqis may be differences of history or tradition, culture or ethnicity, but in a democratic process these differences can be a strength rather than a handicap, she said.

As an example of the sectarian tensions in Iraq, Razgar Ali, the head of the Kirkuk provincial council, said the brother of a top Sunni leader in the Shiite-dominated government, parliament speaker Hajim al-Hassani, was arrested by U.S. and Iraqi forces because he is the leader of a terrorist cell called Mohammed al-Fatih.

Hatam Mahdi al-Hassani initially was reported kidnapped along with two others. Nash'at al-Hassani denied his brother was involved with terrorists.

We are a religious family and we have no relations with insurgents. We demand his immediate release, if he is under police custody, he said.

The parliament speaker was not immediately available for comment.

U.S. forces also reported a Thursday raid on an insurgent cell responsible for suicide bombings in which seven men were killed, including one wearing a vest loaded with explosives.

Coalition forces, acting on multiple intelligence sources and tips from local citizens, raided three suspected terrorist safe houses, the statement said. During the raid, coalition forces killed seven terrorists and detained five. The terrorists were armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and explosives.

In the deadliest bombing in Baghdad since Sept. 19, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant Thursday, killing 35 police officers and civilians and wounding 25, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed in an Internet posting that it staged the attack in retaliation for U.S. and Iraqi operations near the Syrian border. Earlier, it claimed responsibility for Wednesday's deadly hotel bombings in neighboring Jordan, linking those blasts to the conflict in Iraq.

The authenticity of those claims could not be verified.