BAGHDAD — A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq, the military said Wednesday, in a spike of violence that pushed to at least nine the number of Americans who have died here this week.
The latest attack took place about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday in Nineveh province, where al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups remain active. An Iraqi interpreter also died in the blast, the U.S. statement said without further details.
Those fatalities brought the death toll for American troops in Iraq this month to at least 25 — well below figures of last year but an increase over the 19 who died in May, the lowest monthly tally of the war.
In all, at least 4,109 U.S. military service members have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The U.S. military says that violence in Iraq has dropped to its lowest level in more than four years but that attacks are continuing as Sunni and Shiite extremists try to regroup and undermine security gains.
“The level of violence has dropped dramatically,” said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, spokesman for the U.S. command in Baghdad. “It has gotten quieter. But that doesn’t make these losses any easier.”
The bombing in Nineveh occurred a day after a bombing in a district council office in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City killed four Americans — two soldiers and two government employees.
The Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman suggested that the four Americans were not the main targets of the attack. Five Iraqis and an Italian-Iraqi interpreter for the Americans also were killed.
Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, the spokesman, said a preliminary investigation indicated that internal Shiite rivalries among the council members were to blame.
“The presence of the American forces and embassy employees was by chance,” al-Askari said.
On Monday, a Sunni gunman waiting in a car killed two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter as they emerged from a meeting with municipal officials in Madain, about 15 miles southeast of Baghdad.
The U.S. military said American soldiers on Wednesday killed three suspected militants after they came under fire from a vehicle near Baghdad International Airport, among the most heavily guarded areas in Iraq.
The soldiers, who were part of a convoy that was stopped on the roadside, returned fire. That caused the vehicle to run off the road and explode.
But a security official at the hospital that received the bodies said the three killed were bank employees, not militants. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he was not authorized to release information.
