Five U.S. Marines died by roadside bomb attack Wednesday on their vehicle near Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Thursday. A sailor attached to the Marines' unit also was killed Wednesday in Ramadi by gunfire, the military added. The deaths on Wednesday brought to 1,706 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.
Meanwhile, three Iraqis, two of them children, were killed by a homemade bomb in Kahn Bani Saad, north of Baghdad, that appeared to target civilians, police said Thursday.
Later in the day, a suicide car bomber slammed into a truck carrying Iraqi policemen near Baghdad airport Thursday, killing at least eight and wounding 25.
These incidents came as Shiite politicians completed efforts to include the disaffected Sunni minority in the work of drafting Iraq's new constitution. According to The AP, top members of the Shiite-dominated committee preparing the charter reached agreement with the Sunnis on how many representatives the minority will have on the body.
Thursday's deal broke weeks of deadlock between the 55-member committee and Sunni Arabs over the size of their representation.
