The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Baghdad

At least nine people including three US soldiers were killed in different incidents in Iraq.

Three US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, the US military announced on Thursday, making them the first American casualties of the new year.

A military statement said two soldiers were killed in a small-arms fire attack while conducting operations in Diyala province on Thursday. Another soldier was wounded.

A separate statement said another soldier was killed when his foot patrol was struck by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad on Wednesday.

The latest deaths bring the total number of American soldiers killed since the 2003 US-led invasion to 3,905, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

The month of December saw the second lowest monthly US casualty toll of the war, with 21 soldiers killed.

The year 2007, however, proved the deadliest year for the US military since the invasion, with at least 896 soldiers killed,

Meanwhile, seven civilians were killed in separate incidents of violence in Iraq Thursday, according to security sources and media reports.

In Arbil, in the northern Kurdish region, city police department chief Abdel-Khaleq Talaat told reporters that an element belonging to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces shot at a family, killing four of them on the spot and wounding two.

Talaat described the Peshmerga militant as 'mentally deranged.' The militant had stormed into the family's home and opened fire.

In another incident, three members of another family were killed when a bomb went off near their residence in Zafaraniyah, southern Baghdad, Voices of Iraq news agency reported citing police sources. Four people were injured, it said.

Another report adds: For decades, the Imams bridge spanning the Tigris river linked two ancient Baghdad neighborhoods - one Sunni, the other Shiite - and illustrated the city's tradition of sectarian tolerance, as residents from both sides harmoniously intermingled.But the Imams was sealed and barricaded after nearly 1,000 Shiites fleeing what they thought was a Sunni suicide bomber died in a stampede on the bridge in 2005. It has remained closed through the past two years of rampant sectarian violence across the capital.

Iraqi authorities now want to reopen the four-lane, 900-foot bridge. For most residents, however, the wounds are too fresh and the fears too real to risk opening a passageway between the two communities. They are fighting the plan.

As violence lessens across the capital - the American military says all attacks in Baghdad have dropped 81 percent since June - the problem of the Imams bridge offers a glimpse at one of the biggest challenges ahead: how to begin normalizing security measures during what Iraqis hope is a transition to a less bloody future, part of the government's effort to achieve national reconciliation.

On either side of the Imams bridge is the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiya and the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah.

Reuters, Diyarbakir

The death toll from a bomb explosion in southeast Turkey's largest city has risen to five, including three children, and the number of injured stands at 110, security sources said on Friday.

Eight of the injured are in a serious condition and the death toll could increase further, they said. The bomb, which exploded in the centre of Diyarbakir on Thursday evening, targeted a military service vehicle that had been carrying 46 army personnel as it passed near a school. The bomb was set off by remote control.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the blast but authorities have blamed militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whom Turkish security forces are battling both in Turkey and in nearby northern Iraq.

State prosecutors have granted security forces "unlimited search" powers for 16 days, enabling them to search homes, offices and vehicles in Diyarbakir, a city of 1 million people, without seeking prior permission.

Police have so far detained 12 people for suspected involvement in the explosion, the security sources said.

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed their determination to crush the PKK after the blast. General Yasar Buyukanit, head of Turkey's powerful military General Staff, was expected in Diyarbakir on Friday.

The blast has reinforced the pressure on Turkey's politicians and generals to keep up an aerial bombardment campaign against PKK positions in mountainous northern Iraq.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. The United States and the European Union, like Turkey, classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.

The U.S. military is sharing intelligence with Turkey to help combat the PKK.

Gul is due to discuss the PKK and northern Iraq during talks next week in Washington with U.S. President George W. Bush.

AP, Gaza City

Israeli troops on a night mission in the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas gunmen early Friday as Israel responded to Palestinian rocket fire with strikes against militants that left 11 dead in 24 hours.

The simmering conflict between Israel and Gaza's armed groups has escalated less than a week before President Bush's visit to the region, overshadowing peace efforts and increasing the chances of a full-scale armed conflict in Gaza.

On Thursday, Palestinian militants hit Israel with a Katyusha rocket, a weapon with a deadlier warhead and longer range than the smaller rockets militants regularly launch. It hit in the northern part of the town of Ashkelon, the longest reach yet for a Palestinian rocket.

The Israelis hit back Thursday with airstrikes and ground operations that killed nine people, including three civilians. On Friday infantrymen inside Gaza, near the Israeli border, clashed with Hamas gunmen and killed two of them, according to Hamas and Palestinian medical officials.

Troops saw armed men approaching them and opened fire, the military said.

Thursday's rocket strike caused no casualties, but Israel considers it an escalation, government spokesman David Baker said.

AP, Colombo

Sri Lanka's government officially notified peace-broker Norway on Thursday that it is pulling out of a 2002 cease-fire agreement with Tamil Tiger rebels that has failed to quell the violence.

Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama handed a letter to Norwegian Ambassador Tore Hattrem, saying the government has decided to terminate the Norway-brokered agreement, a Foreign Ministry statement said. The government has said growing violence in the last two years has rendered the agreement irrelevant.

The United States said it was "troubled" by the government's decision, saying it will make solving the country's problems even harder.

"All parties to the conflict share the responsibility to protect the rights of all of Sri Lanka's people," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.

Norway has warned the violence raging in Sri Lanka would likely worsen.

"This comes on top of the increasingly frequent and brutal acts of violence perpetrated by both parties, and I am deeply concerned that the violence and hostilities will now escalate even further," said Erik Solheim, a key mediator in the decades-old civil war. "This would weaken efforts to protect the civilian population, which would be most regrettable."

Reuters, Washington

President George W. Bush called Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday an ally of the United States in fighting terrorism and said he should work with the winner of elections delayed to next month after the killing of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto's assassination last week as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi threw Pakistan into turmoil and left questions about who was behind the gun and suicide bomb attack. The general election, which Washington hopes will mark a democratic transition in the nuclear-armed country, was postponed to Feb. 18 from Jan. 8. "I think that whoever wins the election is somebody with whom President Musharraf should work, and of course we will be a strong ally of Pakistan," Bush said in a Reuters interview at the White House.

"I've always been a supporter of President Musharraf," he said. "I believe he is strong in the war on terror. He understands clearly the risks of dealing with extremists and terrorists. After all, they've tried to kill him."

Musharraf had kept his pledge to step down from his military post and to set a date for elections, Bush noted. "He's an ally."

The United States considers Pakistan important in fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants along the border with Afghanistan.

"They (militants) want to, in this case, derail democracy, create confusion and chaos, kill a brave woman in order to advance their agenda," he said.