Nine US soldiers killed in Iraq suicide attack

BAGHDAD: A suicide car bomber killed nine U.S. soldiers at a military base north of Baghdad on Monday in the deadliest single attack against American ground forces in more than a year, the military said.   

In a statement seen early on Tuesday, the military said 20 other U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi civilian were wounded in the attack on the patrol base in volatile Diyala province.   

The attack brings to 85 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq this month, making April the deadliest since December, when 112 soldiers were killed.   

The statement said 15 of the wounded soldiers were able to return to duty after medical treatment. While insurgents frequently attack heavily fortified U.S. bases in Iraq with mortars and small arms fire, such frontal assaults are rare.   

Tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have been deployed in Baghdad since February under a security crackdown that is seen as a last-ditch attempt to halt Iraq's slide into all-out civil war.   

That has prompted insurgents to focus their attacks more on provinces outside the capital.   

Diyala, with a mixed population of Sunni Arabs and Shiites, has seen a sharp rise in communal violence. U.S. commanders have sent additional troops to the area, where Sunni Arab insurgents and al Qaeda militants are believed to have regrouped in the wake of the Baghdad push.   

In the previous worst ground attack against U.S. forces in Iraq, 10 U.S. Marines were killed near Falluja in a bombing on Dec. 1, 2005.

U.S. President George W. Bush is under increasing pressure from Democrats to set a timetable for the withdrawal of the nearly 150,000 American troops in Iraq.   

More than 3,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.   

While additional U.S. troops in Baghdad have reduced the number of sectarian murders in the capital, there has been a surge in car bombings inside and outside Baghdad.   

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, in his first news conference since arriving in Baghdad, said on Monday he had been in discussions with the Iraqi government and U.S. officials on how to ;take apart; the car bomb cells which have defied the two-month-old security clampdown in the capital.   

A wave of up to 15 explosions resounded in Baghdad before dawn on Tuesday, apparently coming from the city's outskirts. A U.S. military spokesman said he was not aware of any operation taking place at the time.   

The blasts sounded like mortar shells or artillery.   

While explosions often echo across the city, it is rare for so many to be heard in the early hours of the morning.