7 US Marines killed in Iraq car bomb blast

A massive car bomb exploded on the outskirts of Fallujah on Monday, killing seven U.S. Marines and wounding several others, a U.S. military official said. It was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in four months of fighting.

The strength of the blast sent the engine from the vehicle used in the bombing flying "a good distance" from the site, a military official said on condition of anonymity.

Witnesses said the attack took place 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of Fallujah and destroyed two Humvees.

Medical teams in helicopters swept into the dusty barren site to ferry away the injured. Troops sealed off the area surrounding the wreckage.

Four Iraqis, meanwhile, were taken to a hospital in Fallujah with gunshot wounds after allegedly coming under fire from U.S. troops near the site of the car bombing, said Ahmed Bassem of the Fallujah General Hospital. The U.S. military was unable to immediately confirm the report.

It was the largest number of American combat deaths in Iraq since May 2, when nine U.S. troops died in separate mortar attacks and roadside bombings in Baghdad, Ramadi and Kirkuk.

There were seven troops killed on two days last month, but in each case there were six Americans and one foreign coalition member who died. On Aug. 21, six U.S. service members and one Polish soldier died in combat, and six were killed on Aug. 15, along with a Ukrainian soldier.

On July 8, seven U.S. soldiers also died, but one was felled by illness, the Pentagon reported.

U.S. forces have not patrolled inside Fallujah since April, when U.S. Marines ended a three-week siege. The city has since fallen into the hands of insurgents who have used it as a base to manufacture car bombs and launch attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces.

The U.S. military has retaliated by launching several airstrikes on insurgent safe houses in the city.

As of Friday, Sept. 3, 976 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department.

AFP adds: Iraqi forces backed by US troops swept through the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk overnight and arrested about 25 suspects, including a fugitive security chief under the former regime, police said Monday.

"Elements from the national guard and police, backed by US troops, raided a number of houses after receiving information about some terrorist elements and we arrested 25 suspects," Kirkuk police chief Turhan Yusef said.

Another police officer in the oil-rich city said Iraqi forces had also arrested Sirhan Ahmed Khalaf, the head of security in the restive city of Samarra under the former regime of Saddam Hussein. "He was from Samarra but came to Kirkuk to hide. He is thought to be behind attacks against Iraqis and the Americans," he said, adding that the fugitive Baath official was now in US custody. According to an AFP count, at least 105 police officers or Iraqis employed by the US-led coalition have killed in Kirkuk since June 2003.

On Saturday, suicide car bomb exploded in front of a police academy in Kirkuk, killing 17 people, including 14 policemen.

There have been 35 Iraqi university professors that were assassinated since the toppling of the former regime, local newspaper Al Nahdhah reported Sunday.

Iraqi minister of higher education and scientific research Dr. Tahir Al Bakaa was quoted as saying that all the assassinations were filed against unknown people and most of them took place outside the campus.

These operations are totally rejected, for they are targeting the scientific cells in the Iraqi society and the people who are behind them are only terrorist elements aided by international organizations aiming to keep Iraq back worded, denounced the minister.

Bakaa, meanwhile, pointed out that the killing operations are part of threatening operations that the university professors receive from some of the armed groups.

The last victim of the killing operations was Abdul Hadi Al Hiti, president of Al Anbar University who received a threat from an armed group that broke into his office and led him to an unknown destination, he added. (AP)

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