BAGHDAD, June 28, 2005 - Suicide bombers assassinated a prominent member of the Iraqi parliament and killed two U.S. soldiers on Tuesday ahead of a speech by President George W. Bush to rally Americans behind an increasingly unpopular war.

Bush was expected to mark a year since Washington formally handed over sovereignty to Iraqis by calling on Americans to stay the course in a speech to the nation surrounded by troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Hours before he was to speak, two U.S. soldiers were killed in separate suicide car bomb attacks on patrols.

Their deaths brought to 885 the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq in the year since sovereignty was granted, more than the 856 who died in the 15 months of the invasion and formal occupation that preceded it.

U.S. Marines pressed the offensive against Sunni Arab insurgents by dispatching 1,000 U.S. troops and 100 Iraqis on a major operation against rebels in the western Euphrates valley.

In Baghdad, another suicide car bomber hit a convoy killing lawmaker Dhari Ali al-Fayadh along with his son and three bodyguards, making him the second member of Iraq's National Assembly assassinated since the government took power in April.

He was the oldest member of parliament and had served as its speaker on the first day it gathered after elections in January.

"An attack on a man of his age means an attack on all the Iraqi people and national values," Hussein al-Sadr, a Shi'ite cleric and member of parliament, told the house.

The Iraqi wing of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organisation claimed responsibility on a Web site for the attack.

"FREEDOM ON MARCH"

Worsening violence over the last two months has put new pressure on Bush after a period when Iraq's January election and a lull in attacks were presented as signs of success.

A year ago on June 28, Bush scribbled "Let Freedom Reign" on a note handed to him by Condoleezza Rice during a NATO meeting, when his then national security adviser informed him a handover ceremony had formally ended the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Over the next months, Washington's 140,000 troops helped appointed interim leaders hold the vote that produced Iraq's first elected government in 50 years.

But the insurgency waged by Sunni Arabs -- both Iraqis and some foreigners -- has become far more deadly since the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government took power in April. Suicide bombings now kill or wound hundreds of Iraqis every week.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll found most Americans did not believe administration assertions that gains were being made, although a majority also said U.S. troops should stay on.

Rice, now secretary of state, said Bush would not waver.

"This president has always lived by his convictions and his values, not by what he sees in the polls. He is going to go to the American people who elected him just six months ago and tell them again why it is important that we finish the job in Iraq," she told ABC's "Good Morning America" show.

U.S. statements on Iraq have given mixed messages over the past weeks. At the end of May, Vice President Dick Cheney said the insurgency was in its "last throes". But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday it may last a decade or more.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday violence was "serious" in Iraq. "It is worse than we anticipated," he told reporters.

OPERATION SWORD

Bombs have killed more U.S. soldiers in each of the last two months than in any previous month since the war began. One U.S. soldier was killed and one wounded by a suicide car bomber in Balad north of Baghdad. Another soldier was killed and two wounded by a similar attack in nearby Tikrit.

Another suicide car bomber struck the entrance to a U.S. base at Baquba. There was no immediate word of casualties.

Other attacks on Tuesday hit Iraqis. A suicide bomber dressed as a policeman blew himself up in a hospital in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, killing three and wounding 13.

A car bomb killed two bodyguards in a failed assassination bid on the chief of traffic police in the ethnically divided northern oil city of Kirkuk and police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the southern city of Samawa wounding seven.

U.S. Marines dispatched 1,000 troops into the western Euphrates River valley between the cities of Hit and Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad on Tuesday for Operation Sword, at least their fourth similarly sized operation in the area in the last two months.

In their last such campaign the Marines said they killed dozens of insurgents in the border town of Karabila during Operation Spear earlier this month. They reduced much of the town to rubble before abandoning it after their five-day raid.

The anniversary of the handover of sovereignty was little noted in Iraq, although President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, received U.S. and British diplomats who offered congratulations.

Ordinary Iraqis said they had little to celebrate.

"What changed since the transfer of sovereignty? Terrorism, killings and bombings became widespread," said civil servant Luai Hadi, 34. "There is no water, services and no power."


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