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.