The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Baghdad

Three U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, the latest casualties in what has been the deadliest year of the war for U.S. forces.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one civilian and wounded two just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone compound that houses the U.S. embassy and government ministries, police said.

The explosion in central Baghdad shook buildings in the Green Zone, and was one of the loudest heard in the capital in weeks after a lull in attacks that had become almost a daily occurrence earlier this year.

Police said the bomb targeted a passing U.S. military convoy. One vehicle had been hit, police said, but it was unclear if there were any American casualties.

A witness at a hotel inside the Green Zone said the force of the blast shook the dust off the building's outside walls.

Two U.S. soldiers died and four were wounded when they were hit by a roadside bomb in restive Diyala province northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday, the military said in a statement.

Roadside bombs are by far the biggest killers of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Another U.S. soldier was shot and killed near the volatile city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad.

Their deaths took the total of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq to 3,863, according to the independent Web site icasualties.org, which tracks military and civilian casualties in Iraq.

U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties dropped sharply in the previous two months, with a boost of 30,000 extra troops, improving Iraqi security forces and the growing use of neighborhood police units being credited for the declines.

However, about 860 U.S. troops have been killed so far this year, the worst annual total since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003. The previous worst yearly total was in 2004, when 849 U.S. soldiers were killed.

U.S. President George W. Bush sent the extra troops to Iraq in a last-ditch bid to stop Iraq from spiraling into sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam.

The offensive began in mid-February, when Iraq was gripped by multiple bombings and shooting attacks almost every day. Attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere have gradually declined since the "surge" troops became fully operational in mid-June.

However ethnically mixed Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and Diyala province remain trouble spots after al Qaeda in Iraq, blamed for most big car bomb attacks, were squeezed out of western Anbar province and Baghdad and headed to those regions.