The U.S. military said Thursday that another Marine was killed in action in the same Euphrates River valley where 14 Marines died in the worst roadside bombing targeting American forces in the Iraq war.
A car bomb also hit members of a radical Shiite militia in northern Iraq as attacks nationwide killed at least 11 people Thursday.
The latest Marine casualty was in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province 70 miles west of Baghdad. The Marine was killed by small-arms fire Wednesday - the same day 14 Marines and an Iraqi civilian translator died when a huge bomb destroyed their lightly armored vehicle near Haditha.
The latest death brought to at least 24 the number of Marines killed over the last week in along the Euphrates Valley in one of the bloodiest periods for U.S. forces in months. In all, at least 45 American service members have died in Iraq since July 24 - all but two in combat, reports CTV.
According to The Conservative Voice, the U.S. command, meanwhile, said soldiers from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment killed five insurgents who attacked Iraqi police Wednesday in the northern city of Tal Afar. There were no American casualties.
Elsewhere, gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol Thursday in Dujail, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing four Iraqi troops, Brig. Ali Kadhim said.
Two Iraqi soldiers from the elite Wolf Brigade also were killed in a car bombing near a Shiite shrine in Daquq, 20 miles south of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The brigade members were accompanying a delegation from the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr back from Tal Afar, where they delivered supplies to beleaguered civilians.
The delegation had stopped at the shrine when the blast occurred. Two clerics from al-Sadr's group also were killed, according to police Col. Mohammed Saleh Abbas. He said tensions in the area were running high after the blast.
Three other policemen were killed in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk earlier Thursday, officials said.
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