Baghdad, Iraq – Insurgent attacks killed seven U.S. service members in Iraq over the weekend even as the Shiite-dominated parliament reached out Sunday to Sunni Arabs, approving four more of them to serve as government ministers.
More than 300 people, including American forces, have been killed in a torrent of insurgent attacks since Iraq’s Cabinet was sworn in April 28 with seven positions undecided.
Parliament approved all six of the nominees placed before it Sunday by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. But one of the four Sunnis, the man tapped as human-rights minister, rejected the post on the grounds of tokenism, tarnishing the Shiite premier’s bid to include the disaffected minority believed to be driving Iraq’s deadly insurgency.
Once that position is filled, only one vice premiership will remain open. Al-Jaafari said he hopes to name a woman to that job, filling out a Cabinet after more than three months of political wrangling since the country’s landmark democratic elections.
Three of the U.S. victims were soldiers killed Sunday in bombings in central Iraq, the U.S. command said. One soldier was killed and a second was wounded during an attack on a patrol near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. Two others died in an explosion near Khaldiyah, 75 miles west of Baghdad, the military said.
On Saturday, three U.S. Marines and a sailor were killed in fighting with insurgents in western Iraq, some of whom fought from inside a hospital, the military said.
The battle, in which an unspecified number of insurgents were killed, began in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, when U.S. forces responding to small- arms fire near the Haditha Dam saw Iraqi civilians running from Haditha Hospital, the military said.
The soldiers were then attacked by a suicide car bomb that destroyed a nearby building and set fire to the hospital.
Insurgents inside the hospital set off a roadside bomb and fired small arms and rocket-propelled grenades at the U.S. forces.
After the fight, Marines searched the hospital and found fortified firing positions at sandbagged windows.
At least 1,599 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
U.S. and Iraqi forces hit back over the weekend, capturing 109 suspected insurgents and killing six in a series of raids, the U.S. military said. Among those captured was an unidentified senior military officer in Saddam Hussein’s government.
