6 Iraqi Troops Die as Checkpoints Hit

Insurgents launched coordinated attacks against four Iraqi army checkpoints along a road between Baqubah and Baghdad, killing six soldiers, police said Thursday.

At least eight people -- three soldiers, four policemen and a civilian -- were wounded as fighting continued late into the afternoon.

In other violence, the U.S. military said two American troops had been killed and one wounded in a roadside bombing Wednesday in Baghdad.

A third American died Wednesday in a vehicle accident in central Iraq, the military said. That brought to eight the number of Americans killed in Iraq this week.

As of Wednesday, at least 1,790 members of the U.S. military had died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to the Pentagon’s count.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, a train carrying fuel exploded when it was hit by a bomb, killing two people and wounding six, police said.

The bomb appeared to have been aimed at a nearby police commando checkpoint, police said. An Internet posting in the name of Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility.

U.S. Marine jets, meanwhile, bombed insurgent positions near Haditha, killing nine insurgents, including five Syrians, the U.S. military said.

The airstrike was launched after troops from the U.S. 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment and the Iraqi 1st Division came under fire in a village west of Haditha, about 130 miles northwest of Baghdad.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Thursday that military officials were considering offering protection to foreign diplomats in Baghdad after militants abducted and killed three Arab envoys this month.

“Coalition forces ... are planning to look at this problem and see what could be done to fix the security for the diplomats,” Khalilzad told reporters. “It’s very important for foreign diplomats who come here to have a sense of security.”

He spoke a day after Al Qaeda in Iraq said it had killed two Algerian diplomats because of their government’s ties to the United States and its crackdown on Islamic extremists. Previously, it claimed responsibility for killing an Egyptian envoy.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced that a 30-year-old Iraqi detainee died at Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run prison camp in southern Iraq.

The detainee, who was not identified, died Wednesday from renal failure and other organ failure due to chronic malaria, the military said.

The man was admitted to a field hospital July 3. Hospital officials said they believed he had contracted malaria before arriving at the camp in December but had not shown any symptoms.

The detainee was considered a security threat, the military said. Camp Bucca, near the southern city of Basra, holds more than 6,000 detainees.