Baghdad: Eight American soldiers were killed in Iraq on Sunday, including six who died along with a European journalist in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad, the US military said.
Earlier, a car bomb killed 35 people and wounded 80 next to a crowded market in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad which has been a repeated target of attacks blamed on Sunni Islamist Al Qaida.
They were among the bloodiest incidents of violence on a day when nearly 100 people were either killed or found dead.
The US military said in a statement that the six soldiers and the journalist were killed in volatile Diyala province when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle.
US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said the journalist was European and worked for a news organization that did not have a permanent presence in Baghdad. He declined to give more information.
The attack in Diyala was one of the most lethal single strikes against US forces in months. The US military recently sent around 1,000 reinforcements to fight entrenched Al Qaida militants and Sunni Arab insurgents in the province
Two other US soldiers were killed in separate bomb attacks on Sunday, the military said, one of them in Baghdad.
The US military also reported that two US Marines were killed on Saturday in western Anbar province and one soldier was killed in Baghdad on Friday.
That makes 28 US soldiers killed this month, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks military casualties. In April, 104 were killed, making it one of the deadliest months since the US-led invasion in 2003.
