The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Baghdad

At least twelve persons including three American soldiers were killed in Iraq violence.

The US military announced on Saturday the deaths of three soldiers, including two who were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad that also left two Iraqis dead.

The two were killed when their vehicle was struck while on patrol in Baghdad. The attack also wounded one soldier who was taken to a US medical facility for treatment, a statement said without giving further details.

The military had earlier reported the death on Friday of another soldier, who sustained injuries in a rocket or mortar attack south of Baghdad.

Four other soldiers were wounded in Friday's "indirect fire" attack, it said. The US military uses the term "indirect fire" to refer to rocket or mortar attacks. Meanwhile, clashes involving fighters firing mortar shells and US-Iraqi forces in southwest Baghdad killed six suspected insurgents and wounded one, Iraq's interior ministry and American officials said on Friday.

The clashes occurred in the Saydiyah neighbourhood on Thursday, the officials said.

"There was an engagement yesterday in the Saydiyah area involving an aerial weapons team and an enemy mortar team," a military spokesman, Major Kirk Luedeke, told AFP.

"Six enemy combatants were positively identified, engaged and killed by the Aerial Weapons Team," he said.

"An additional wounded combatant was treated for his wounds and taken into custody for further questioning," Luedeke said.

"Weapons and several improvised explosive devices were found on the individuals involved and in the building they exited from." The interior ministry official said there had been fighting on the ground before the US military called in air support.

Although US military commanders say that the number of attacks across Iraq has fallen by 60 percent since June, they warn that Al-Qaeda and other insurgents groups remain a dangerous force.

The dip in violence is attributed to a "surge" of 30,000 US troops, the decision by many Sunni Arabs to turn against Al-Qaeda and actively hunt down jihadists, and a ceasefire being observed by the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Amother report adds: At least two men said to be Shiite militia fighters were killed Friday by Iraqi security forces in southeastern Iraq.

Six men died in clashes with U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported.

Fighting broke out in Kut, the capital of Wasit province, as security forces conducted a house-to-house search for rogue members of the Mehdi Army, the militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr, CNN reported. Sadr recently extended a cease-fire, but some rogue members have set up a base in Kut.

Two police officers and eight reputed fighters were injured.

A U.S. soldier died of wounds from indirect fire in southern Baghdad, military officials reported. Four soldiers were wounded.