September 24, 2005


BAGHDAD, Iraq — Heavy fighting surged yesterday in the Euphrates River city of Ramadi, police and hospital officials said, and the U.S. military reported the deaths of three more soldiers around the militant stronghold, scene of several American deaths this month.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Army soldier whose convoy was patrolling southeastern Baghdad last night, raising to at least 1,913 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

Earlier in the capital, a suicide bomber on a public minibus set off an explosives belt as the vehicle approached a busy terminal yesterday, killing at least five people and wounding eight, police said.

Also in the capital, gunmen killed a member of the commission charged with ensuring former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime are banned from the Iraqi government, police said. Thirteen commission members have been killed since it was created two years ago.

The U.S. military declined to say if it was conducting a large offensive against Ramadi, but police and residents have reported heavy fighting there during the past week. Seven service members have died in or near the city since Sept. 1.

"There are 30 to 40 battalion-level operations going on across Iraq on any given day," said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

On Thursday, a U.S. soldier was killed in a roadside bombing between Ramadi and nearby Fallujah, and another in a gunbattle in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

Ramadi police Capt. Nasir Al-Alousi said U.S. forces airlifted equipment into the city stadium before dawn yesterday. He said clashes erupted in that area and spread to an industrial zone after sunrise, continuing until at least midday.

Dr. Omar al-Rawi at Ramadi General Hospital said two people were killed and eight wounded in the fighting. Police Lt. Mohammed Tirbas Al-Obaidi said a roadside bomb destroyed an American armored vehicle, but it was impossible to say if there were casualties because U.S. forces blocked the area.

The deadliest day for U.S. forces in Ramadi this month was Monday, when four soldiers attached to the Marines died in two roadside bombings.

Militants have used Ramadi as a stronghold since the start of the insurgency two years ago. The city of about 300,000 is the capital of Anbar province, which fans out west from Baghdad to the Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian borders.

It includes much of the Sunni heartland, where residents lived a relatively privileged life under Saddam, a Sunni. Since Saddam's ouster by the U.S.-led coalition, the insurgency has grown in strength. At one time or another, militants have controlled most of the major population centers along the Euphrates, which flows through the province from the Syrian border toward Baghdad.

A major focus of U.S. operations in Anbar province, a senior American military officer has said, was to help the Iraqis regain control of a 250-mile stretch of Syrian border on either side of the city of Qaim.