A lethal ambush on a convoy carrying female US troops in Fallujah underscored the difficulties of keeping women away from the front lines in a counterinsurgency war where such boundaries are far from clear-cut.
The suicide car bomb and ensuing small arms fire attack killed at least two Marines, including one woman, and four others were missing and presumed dead, the military said. Thirteen other troops were wounded, including 11 women.
The ambush late Thursday also suggested that Iraqi insurgents may have regained a foothold in Fallujah, which has been occupied by US and Iraqi forces since they wrested control of the restive city from insurgents seven months ago.
The women were part of a team of Marines who were assigned to various checkpoints around Fallujah. Female Marines are used at the checkpoints to search Muslim women "in order to be respectful of Iraqi cultural sensitivities," a military statement said. It is considered insulting for men to search female Muslims.
The terror group al-Qaeda in Iraq on Friday claimed it carried out the ambush, one of the single deadliest attacks against the Marines -- and against women -- in this country. The high number of female casualties spoke to the lack of any real front lines in Iraq, where US troops are battling a raging insurgency and American women soldiers have taken part in more close-quarters combat than in any previous military conflict.
"It's hard to stop suicide bombers, and it's hard to stop these people that in many cases are being smuggled into Iraq from outside Iraq," President George W. Bush said at a joint White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Friday.
Current Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in front line combat roles -- in the infantry, armor or artillery, for example. But an increasing number of female troops have been exposed to hostile fire.
Thirty-six female troops have died since the war began, including the one that was announced Friday, said a Pentagon spokesman. Thirty-four were Army, one Navy and one Marine. Most have died from hostile fire. More than 11,000 women are serving in Iraq, part of 138,000 US troops in the country, said a US military spokesman.
Thursday's attack may have been the single largest involving female US service members since a Japanese suicide pilot slammed his plane into the USS Comfort near the Philippines in 1945, killing six Army nurses, according to figures from the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation.
In Thursday's attack, the Marines were returning to their base, Camp Fallujah, when the ambush took place near the eastern entrance to the city, 40km west of Baghdad.
A US-led offensive in November wrested Fallujah from insurgents. The US military says 1,200 insurgents were slain and about 2,000 suspects captured in the battle. At least 54 US troops and eight Iraqi soldiers were killed.
The State Department says about 90,000 of Fallujah's 300,000 residents have recently returned to the city, which benefited from former president Saddam Hussein's 23 years in power, as did other cities in the Sunni-dominated area north and west of Baghdad. The former dictator, himself a Sunni, recruited many Republican Guard officers and security agents from the area.
Lance Corporal Holly Charette, 21, from Cranston, Rhode Island, died in the attack. A male Marine was killed by small arms fire immediately afterward, the military said. His family identified him as Chad Powell, 22, from northern Louisiana. Powell is survived by his parents, his wife and a 3-year-old son, Elijah.
The military did not provide the genders of the missing three Marines and a sailor who were believed to be in the vehicle that was attacked. They were presumed dead, but the victims have not been identified.
The attack, which raised the death toll among US military members since the beginning of the war to 1,731, came as Americans have grown increasingly concerned about a conflict that has shown no signs of abating. One year ago, 842 US service members had died in Iraq, compared to 194 on that date in 2003.
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