Body of missing American soldier found

Baghdad: Iraqi police said yesterday they had found the body of one of three missing US soldiers while nine others were killed in attacks, setting May on course to be one of the bloodiest months for American forces in Iraq.

Twenty people were killed when a bomber wearing a suicide vest walked into a crowded cafe in a volatile province northeast of Baghdad and blew himself up, police said.

Police said a half-naked body, with bullet wounds and signs of torture pulled from the Euphrates River south of Baghdad yesterday, was that of one of three US soldiers missing since an ambush on May 12.

Captain Muthanna Al Maamouri, a police spokes-man in Hilla, the capital of Babel province, said there were bullet wounds to the torso and shaved head of the body, which was wearing US Army-issue pants and boots and had a tattoo on the left arm.

"This is one of the missing soldiers," he said.

The US military said it had the body and was trying to establish whether it was one of those missing since the May 12 attack south of Baghdad when four US soldiers and an Iraqi translator were killed.

"We have received the body and we will work diligently to determine if in fact it is one of our missing soldiers," military spokes-man Major-General William Caldwell told a news conference.

A river patrol police officer in Mussayab, 60km south of Baghdad, said the man appeared to have been killed about a week ago, and his head showed signs of torture.

Bloody month

Thousands of US and Iraqi soldiers have been scouring farmland for the missing troops in an area south of Baghdad known as the "Triangle of Death" since the ambush.

The Al Qaida-led Islamic State in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the attack near Mahmudiya but has offered no proof that it holds the three missing soldiers.

US military officials have said they believe at least two of the soldiers were still alive.

The US military also reported the deaths of nine more soldiers and Marines in five separate bomb and shooting attacks on Monday and Tuesday, ensuring May would be one of the bloodiest for US forces since the 2003 invasion.

Eighty soldiers have now been killed since the beginning of May and 3,431 since the US invasion began.

The US military has increased its visibility as it deploys thousands of extra troops in Baghdad and other areas as part of a security crackdown aimed at dragging Iraq back from the brink of all-out sectarian civil war.

US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said the military had anticipated the possibility of more troop casualties when it launched the crackdown in mid-February.

"We plan for every contingency, but we knew it was a possibility as we stepped up operations," Garver said.

In Mandali, a mainly Shiite Kurd town about 100km northeast of Baghdad near the Iranian border, police said a suicide bomber killed 20 people and wounded 30.

Mandali Mayor Abdul Hussain Al Qaralusy put the death toll at 11.

Mandali is in the volatile Diyala province, a large, religiously mixed area which has seen some of the worst violence since Saddam was toppled.

The security crackdown is an attempt to buy time for Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's government to meet a series of political targets set by Washington, including a revenue-sharing oil law, designed to promote national reconciliation.

"Our battle with terrorism is open and long," Maliki said in a televised national address on his government's first anniversary yesterday.

"No one can think this battle will end today or tomorrow, security threats we are facing in our Iraq are very dangerous."