7 U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, including 4 in single roadside bomb attack

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. military on Sunday announced the deaths of seven more troops in Iraq, including four killed by a roadside bomb while patrolling western Baghdad – the latest American casualties in a monthlong security crackdown in the capital.\nThough violence has receded slightly in the capital, a car bomb killed eight Iraqis in a predominantly Shiite district on Sunday, police said. The attack targeted people cooking food at open-air grills in the street, to offer as charity on a Shiite Muslim holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s death. Police said 28 others were wounded in the attack.\nA U.S. official, meanwhile, blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for chlorine bomb attacks that struck villagers in Anbar province earlier this week but said tight Iraqi security measures prevented a higher number of casualties.\nThe attacks killed at least two people and sickened 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops, the U.S. military said Saturday.\nU.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said at least one of the attackers detonated his explosives after he was unable to get past an Iraqi police checkpoint in Amiriyah, just south of Fallujah, killing only himself. Fox conceded that many Iraqis were exposed to the chemical fumes but insisted that steps Iraqi security forces were increasingly effective.\n“Insurgent attempts to create high-profile carnage are being stopped at checkpoints across the country,” he said at a news conference in Baghdad.\nIraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh appealed to Iraqis to help stop the violence.\n“Opportunity is still available to all honest Iraqis to rescue this country from the criminals,” he said at a joint news conference with Fox. “The chlorine attack was a kind of punishment against the people who stood against terrorist organizations.”\nThere is a growing power struggle between insurgents and Sunnis who oppose them in Anbar, the center of the insurgency, which stretches from Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Anbar assaults came three days after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, traveled there, hoping to reach out to Sunni clan chiefs and to undermine tribal support for the insurgency.\nAfter the explosion that killed four U.S. soldiers on Saturday, the unit came under fire and another soldier was wounded. During this month’s crackdown in the capital, the battalion had found eight weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap victim, the military said.\nAn explosion in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad killed another soldier Saturday and injured five. A U.S. Marine also was killed Saturday in fighting in Anbar, according to a separate statement. A seventh service member died Saturday in a noncombat related incident, the military said.\nSaturday’s deaths brought to at least 3,217 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.