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8 US soldiers killed in Iraq

* Mortar blasts hit Baghdad Green Zone g Gunmen kill 15 Kurd villagers

BAGHDAD: The US military said on Saturday eight more American troops were killed on a single day in Iraq amid raging violence and a desperate search for three captured soldiers.

Three US soldiers were killed on Friday when their vehicle was bit by a bomb northeast of Baghdad, and two more in an ambush inside the city in which gunmen opened fire on a patrol already hit by a roadside booby-trap. Another soldier died in combat in western Iraq, one was shot dead while on foot patrol in Baghdad and the eighth was killed by a roadside bomb south of the capital that wounded two US and two Iraqi troops.

Separately, at least three mortar rounds hit Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and US embassy, wounding one person, an American official said. The blasts came just before British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in the walled district to meet senior Iraq leaders. Later in the day, two more explosions rocked the area, but it was not immediately clear what they were.

Gunmen wearing Iraqi security force uniforms slaughtered at least 15 Kurdish villagers, a local military commander said, blaming Al Qaeda for the massacre.

Brigadier General Nadhim Sharif, commander of Iraqi border forces in Diyala province, said the gang stormed the village of Qara Lus, 100 kilometres east of Baghdad at dawn. The mayor of the nearby town of Mandali, Abdul-Hussein Murad, confirmed Sharif’s report that 15 men had been killed and added that a woman was also among the victims, bringing the death toll to 16.

Nine people suspected of involvement in the abduction of three missing US soldiers have been detained as a massive, weeklong search for the missing servicemen widens, the US military said.

A Chaldean Catholic priest was kidnapped in Baghdad as he left the home of a sick person he had visited, a news agency reported. Father Nawzat Hanna was abducted in the Al-Baladiyat neighbourhood of the Iraqi capital, according to religious news agency Asianews. Monsignor Shlemon Warduni, auxiliary bishop in Baghdad, confirmed the kidnapping to the agency. The abductors had already been in contact with church officials, the agency said. agencies

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