Bomb attacks killed five US soldiers in Iraq, the US military said yesterday, amid reports that the outgoing US ambassador held talks last year with Sunni rebel groups in a bid to curb the country's raging insurgency.
Four of the Americans were killed in a roadside bombing on Sunday in the troubled province of Diyala, where the chief US commander has said his troops are battling al-Qaeda, Sunni, Shiite and even Kurdish renegades.
Two troops were also wounded in the attack, while another soldier died in northwestern Baghdad on the same day in another roadside bombing -- the biggest single killer of US forces fighting in Iraq.
The latest casualties brought the military's losses to 3,234 since US-led foreign troops invaded Iraq in March 2003 to oust president Saddam Hussein, according to a count based on the Pentagon's own figures.
In Iraq's third city of Mosul, gunmen on Sunday killed Sunni tribal leader Mohammed Jassim al-Guud, a member of the al-Ubada, a significant Arab tribe in northern Iraq, said police Major Mohammed Ahmed.
Guud's son and nephew were also wounded after the insurgents sprayed his vehicle with gunshots in central Mosul late on Sunday, the policeman added.
A police major was similarly killed in a Mosul drive-by shooting yesterday while the bodies of two male civilians -- one beheaded and one riddled with bullets -- were found dumped in a western part of the city, Ahmed said.
Four years after the invasion, the more than 140,000 US forces in Iraq are still bogged down fighting a gruelling and ever changing insurgency waged by armed groups, and are a battling to contain Shiite-Sunni sectarian warfare.
All powerful for decades, the country's Sunni minority lost dominance to the Shiite majority after Saddam fell from power in 2003 and boycotted the first post-Saddam national election. The current government is Shiite-led.
Iraqi and US troops last month launched a marathon security operation, the latest in a series of plans to quell the country, deploying 80,000 forces to Baghdad in a bid to wrest back control of the violence-wracked capital.
In an interview with the New York Times published yesterday, Washington's ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, admitted for the first time to holding talks with presumed insurgent leaders in a bid to lure hardline Sunnis into mainstream politics.
"There were discussions with the representatives of various groups in the aftermath of the elections, and during the formation of the government before the Samarra incident, and some discussions afterwards as well," Khalilzad said.
The interview made him the first US official to publicly acknowledge personally holding such talks, which the newspaper said began early last year.
The Times said among the interlocutors were self-identified representatives of the Islamic Army of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades, two leading nationalist groups that have claimed killings of Americans and Westerners.
Khalilzad also reiterated his position that Baghdad and Washington had to consider granting amnesty to insurgents, just days after Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said talks were the only way to quell the unrest.
Hashemi, a moderate Sunni, told the BBC: "I do believe there is no way but to talk to everybody" -- with the exception al-Qaeda.
Khalilzad, an Afghan-born Sunni who played a key role in negotiations over a new Iraqi constitution and the formation of the governing coalition, has justified his outreach to Sunnis as vital to find consensus.
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