BAGHDAD—Five U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, raising the number of American troops killed this month to over 100 and making April one of the deadliest of the war for U.S. forces.
The toll could increase the pressure on U.S. President George W. Bush, who is fighting a plan by Democrats to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.
Bush has vowed to veto a war spending bill from Democrats that requires combat troops to begin withdrawing by Oct 1. The Democrat-controlled Congress plans to send the bill to Bush on Tuesday.
The U.S. military said on Monday three soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad on Sunday. A Marine was killed in western Anbar province on Sunday.
Another soldier was killed by small arms fire in eastern Baghdad on Saturday, the military said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major security crackdown in Baghdad in mid-February that is seen as a final attempt to halt Iraq's plunge into all-out civil war between majority Shi'ites and once-dominant minority Sunni Arabs.
U.S. commanders acknowledge that the offensive, which has led to the deployment of thousands of extra troops on the streets, has increased the risk of military casualties.
Before the announcement of the latest deaths, the independent icasualties.org Web site had put the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in April at 99. Around half have been killed in and around Baghdad.
Some 3,350 U.S. troops and many tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
April has also been a bad month for British forces.
Twelve have been killed in April, the highest number of casualties in a single month since March 2003, when 27 were killed in the opening days of the war.
British Defence Secretary Des Browne made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Monday and met his Iraqi counterpart, the British embassy said. No other details were available.
Mehdi Army
In fresh violence, U.S. forces killed eight gunmen in Baghdad on Sunday, in what some witnesses described as a clash with the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The U.S. military said one Iraqi soldier was killed in the incident in the Shi'ite Kadhimiya district. It denied reports that U.S. forces had entered a mosque and an office run by Sadr, but gave no affiliation for the gunmen.
A U.S. military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver, said U.S. forces had set up an outer perimeter during the incident, while Iraqi forces carried out the operation.
"The fight was between extremists and Coalition forces in the outer perimeter. Coalition forces came under fire and responded, and killed eight extremists," he said.
If the gunmen were Mehdi Army, the clash would mark the heaviest between U.S. forces and the Mehdi militia in Baghdad since the start of the Baghdad crackdown.
Under Sadr's orders, the Mehdi Army has been keeping a low profile during the offensive.
In Anbar province, a tanker laden with chlorine gas exploded near a restaurant west of the city of Ramadi, killing six people and wounding 10, police and hospital sources said.
Insurgents have increasingly used chlorine gas bombs, mostly in the province of Anbar. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar.
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