The Washington Post reports: As U.S. troops push more deeply into Baghdad and its volatile outskirts, Iraqi insurgents are using increasingly sophisticated and lethal means of attack, including bigger roadside bombs that are resulting in greater numbers of American fatalities relative to the number of wounded.

and 9 U.S. troops have died in the first three days of June……

BAGHDAD (AP) — As U.S. jets roared overhead, Mahdi Army militiamen on Sunday battled with Iraqi troops and local police searching for two militia leaders in the southern city of Diwaniyah. At least three people were killed and 24 wounded, official Iraqi sources reported.

The southern clashes came just hours after American helicopter gunships attacked targets in Mahdi Army-dominated Shiite east Baghdad, killing four suspected militants, the U.S. military reported, as the radical Shiite militia faced growing pressure to bow to central government authority.

In unrelated action, the U.S. military reported six American soldiers killed and six wounded in attacks Friday and Saturday. In one, southwest of Baghdad on Friday, a soldier on a foot patrol was killed after approaching two suspicious men outside a mosque, one of whom blew himself up.

Two other Americans were killed Saturday by a makeshift bomb while on patrol in the northern province of Nineveh, bombs killed one in western Baghdad and one in the volatile Diyala province northeast of the capital. Another soldier was killed by small arms fire south of Baghdad.

More at the New York Times

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