The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Baghdad

A suicide attack on Sunday killed three American soldiers during combat operations in the Iraqi city of Baquba, as US officials said violence in the country had dropped sharply.

The US military in a statement said three soldiers were killed as a result of a "suicide vest attack" in the city of Baquba, the capital of the restive Diyala province, but gave no further details.

The latest fatalities brought the US military's overall losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,866, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

The Pentagon figures also take into account soldiers who die after leaving Iraq for treatment. At least 861 US soldiers have been killed since the beginning of 2007, already the deadliest year for the military since the 2003 invasion.

The attack on the soldiers came on a day when 18 Iraqis were also killed by insurgents across the country.

Nine people were killed and 20 injured when a car bomb exploded against a convoy of a top official in the finance ministry, security officials and a medic said. The official, whose identity was not known, escaped unhurt, the officials added.

The bomb exploded near the Al-Hurriyah Square in central Baghdad's Karrada neighbourhood.

A medic at Baghdad's Ibn Nafis hospital, where the injured were taken, confirmed the toll. Three people, including two children, were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a football ground in Baquba, police Colonel Hazim Yasin said.

He said seven other people, including six children, were wounded.

"A roadside bomb went off near the ground where children had assembled to play football. Three people were killed, including two children," he said.

Doctor Firas al-Azzawi of Baquba general hospital also confirmed the casualties.

A car bomb attack against a police patrol in the northern city of Mosul killed three civilians and wounded 16 others, said Brigadier General Abdul Karim al-Juburi, police spokesman for Nineveh province.

Four policemen were among the wounded in the attack, in Al-Dawasa neighbourhood in the centre of the provincial capital Mosul, he said.

In Tikrit, executed dictator Saddam Hussein's home town north of Baghdad, a policeman was killed and three others wounded when the roadside bomb they were trying to defuse exploded, another police official said.