4 U.S. Soldiers Killed Across Iraq

BAGHDAD â€”  Three U.S. soldiers were killed in a mortar strike in the restive western city of Ramadi and another died in a bombing, authorities said Sunday, as tensions flared among Iraqi officials about reported clashes in a religiously mixed area south of the capital.

The incidents, capping a week of resurgent attacks, underscored the precarious security situation more than two years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the government of Saddam Hussein.

Renewed violence has dampened a mood of cautious optimism that began to take hold after a recent drop-off in attacks as newly elected lawmakers tried to form a transitional government.

“The new government should deal with these criminal and terrorist pockets, which have grown to constitute a real threat to our political march,� said Jawad Maliki, one of many leading Shiite Muslim lawmakers to condemn reports of mass kidnappings of Shiites south of Baghdad.

Efforts to name a government have been sluggish since the January election. The leading Shiite and Kurdish factions have struggled to reach an agreement and mollify the long-dominant Sunni minority, which largely stayed away from the polls and is severely underrepresented in the new National Assembly. Disillusioned Sunnis are thought to represent the backbone of the insurgency that has battled U.S. and allied troops here.

The mortar strike late Saturday on the U.S. base in Ramadi injured seven American soldiers in addition to the three killed. The city, a Sunni stronghold, has been among the most violent places in Iraq. The assailants fled into a nearby mosque, a U.S. statement said.

Another American soldier died Sunday south of Baghdad after being wounded by an improvised bomb, Reuters reported.

At least six U.S. troops died over the weekend, but overall attacks against American forces have declined since the election. U.S. forces generally venture outside their compounds only in heavily guarded convoys or large groups. Iraqi security forces and civilians, lacking the armor and firepower of American units, have borne the brunt of insurgent attacks.

The outgoing prime minister, Iyad Allawi, condemned sectarian violence, which he called “savage, criminal and dirty atrocities,� taking place in the town of Madaen, 15 miles south of the capital.

But the exact nature of what has been unfolding in Madaen remained unclear Sunday. Local media reports said that a few to more than 100 Shiites had been kidnapped in recent days, and that Shiites had been warned to leave the area.

But some Sunni and even Shiite leaders suggested that the reports had been exaggerated. The abductions may be part of a pattern of retaliatory kidnappings that have plagued the volatile and religiously divided region, a transition zone between the nation’s Sunni-dominated center and the Shiite heartland to the south.

Independent verification of the conflicting accounts was difficult. The roads leading south from Baghdad are among the most dangerous in a road network plagued by armed assaults and kidnappings.

Officials said hundreds of Iraqi troops had been dispatched to the Madaen area.