Where does it all end??
A suicide car bomber slammed into a 7-ton U.S. military vehicle in Fallujah, killing five Marines and a Navy sailor, Marine Corps sources told NBC News, adding that at least three of the dead were female Marines and that 13 others were wounded.
A review of casualty records indicates the attack is the single deadliest toll for female servicemembers in Iraq. Since the war started, 44 servicewomen have died in attacks or in accidents while in Iraq.
The vehicle, which had 19 people on board, was ferrying members of a U.S. military civil affairs team headed to perform checkpoint searches of female Iraqi civilians when it was attacked Thursday night, the sources said.
The official Marine Corps statement said at least two Marines were killed, and indicated that four more had died as well.
"Three Marines and a sailor believed to be in the vehicle are currently listed as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown pending a positive identification" of the bodies, the statement said.
Victims based at Camp LeJeune
The team was assigned to the II Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based at Camp LeJeune, N.C.
No further information was immediately available.
Fallujah, a city 40 miles west of Baghdad, was the scene of a large-scale campaign in November by U.S. troops to rout militants.
The terrorist group al-Qaida in Iraq, headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying six "crusaders"? were killed and two Humvees were destroyed. The claim was posted on an Internet site, but its authenticity could not be verified.
On Thursday, American and Iraqi troops battled al-Qaida-linked insurgents holed up in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood Thursday, killing at least five militants apparently waiting to carry out suicide bomb attacks.
Word also emerged that a senior al-Qaida leader was killed in a U.S. airstrike near Syria's border. And in a devastating escalation in insurgent attacks in the capital, a string of car bombings carried over into Thursday morning with four more blasts that killed at least 15 people and wounded 28.
Overall, Thursday's violence across Iraq left at least 20 civilians killed and 37 wounded.
Leaders meet ahead of anniversary
News of the latest deaths came as President Bush met Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the White House, and both pledged eventual victory over insurgents.
"The enemy's goal is to drive us out of Iraq before the Iraqis have established a secure democratic government. They will not succeed,"? Bush said at a news conference with al-Jaafari.
Bush also said setting a timetable for withdrawal of the American forces would only prompt the insurgents to "wait us out."?
He said he would stay the course in Iraq despite public opinion polls showing dwindling support for his policy.
Added al-Jaafari: "This is not the time to fall back."?
Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty, an event Bush will mark with a speech.
Al-Jaafari made a stop at the White House on Thursday to review strategy with Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. He went to the archives, met with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill and visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center to express gratitude to U.S. troops wounded in his country.
More than 1,700 American troops have died in the Iraq conflict.
Foreign policy had typically given Bush his highest scores with the public, but that has changed. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll this month found just 41 percent of adults supported his handling of the Iraq war, a new low.
There have been 479 car bombs in Iraq since the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004, according to an AP count. At least 2,174 people have been killed and 5,520 have been wounded.
'More foreign fighters'
Continued bloodshed underscores comments from the top American commander in the Persian Gulf, who told lawmakers on Thursday that the Iraqi insurgency has not grown weaker over the past six months.
"I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago,"? Gen. John Abizaid said during a contentious Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "There's a lot of work to be done against the insurgency."?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the same panel in Washington that Iraq's own security forces have "a way to go"? before they are ready to take over the job from U.S. forces, adding that he opposes congressional calls for a timetable for withdrawing American troops.
Foreign fighters, mostly from Iraq's Arab neighbors, are thought to be responsible for many of the car bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqis over the past 18 months.
Iraq's shared border with Syria is named as the main point of infiltration. On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Syria again to follow through on a pledge to secure its border with Iraq.
But in Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said Syria will ask Baghdad to provide evidence of militants infiltrating across their shared border. He also said a Syrian delegation will soon go to Baghdad to discuss restoring diplomatic ties, severed in 1982
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