15 Iraqi Soldiers Killed by Guerrillas

Guerrillas killed 15 Iraqi soldiers south of Baghdad, Iraqi police said Saturday.

The attack occurred Friday as the soldiers were traveling in a truck near the town of Latifiya, about 30 miles from the Iraqi capital, the police said.

A militant group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, claimed responsibility in an Internet statement for the attack, saying it had killed 16 soldiers.

Insurgents have increasingly targeted Iraqi security forces as police and soldiers have taken over more responsibility for national security from U.S.-led foreign troops.

Last month, more than 250 Iraqi police and soldiers were killed by militants, while attacks against U.S.-led forces have fallen by more than 20% in the last two months, according to the U.S. military. Still, there continue to be about 40 assaults a day aimed at U.S. forces.

The U.S. military said a U.S. soldier had been killed in a roadside bomb blast north of Baghdad on Friday, raising to at least 1,543 the number of U.S. troops who have lost their lives in Iraq.

In other violence Saturday, a suicide car bomber killed two policeman and a child in the northern city of Mosul and wounded several others, police said.

In the town of Haditha in volatile Al Anbar province west of Baghdad, local police chief Maj. Ziad Joghaithi was assassinated by gunmen in two cars as he left a meeting with U.S. troops, Iraqi police said.

Early today, a Pakistani Embassy official and Iraqi police said Pakistan’s consul in Baghdad, Malik Mohammed, had gone missing. He failed to return from prayers at a mosque near his home Saturday. His daughter alerted the embassy, and police searched for him overnight.