Two Fijian private security guards working in Iraq were killed and two more were injured in a bomb attack on their transport convoy at the weekend, Fiji TV reported on Sunday.
The former Fijian soldiers worked for London-based security firm Global Risk Strategies which has employed hundreds of Fijians who once served as United Nations peacekeepers to protect offices, VIPs and oilfields in Iraq, local media said.
A mortar attack killed six US servicemen in western Iraq on Sunday, Marine Major T.V. Johnson said. He told reporters the attack was on a military base two hours drive from Falluja, the rebellious city 50km west of Baghdad, but would give no further details. The deaths took to 10 the number of US servicemen killed in Iraq in the first two days of May alone.
One US soldier was killed and 10 were wounded when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb and fired assault rifles at a US base near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a US military spokesman said.
Two Iraqis were killed and an aide to rebel Shia scholar Moqtada al-Sadr was arrested in a raid by troops of US-led occupation forces in the Iraqi city of Hilla, residents of the city and Sadr aides said on Sunday.
Officials of the Polish-led contingent of multinational troops deployed in the area said they had no information on the incident, as did a spokeswoman for the US military headquarters in Baghdad.
Hilla residents said the soldiers stormed a meeting of religious students and tribal representatives in the city, about 100 km south of Baghdad, on Saturday, and opened fire.
Television footage of the site of the raid early on Sunday showed pools of blood and human remains, as well as bullet holes pock-marking interior walls of the building where the meeting was held.
An aide to Sadr - whose followers rose up last month against US troops in Baghdad and allied forces in southern Iraq after the arrest of one of his lieutenants - said the raid was part of a US campaign against the scholar, who has denounced the occupation of Iraq.
"It is in a pattern of humiliation of the men of religion," Sadr's aide Sheikh Qays al-Khazali told Reuters Television in Najaf. "The occupation forces continue to violate human rights and the rights of the Iraqi people."
US military officials say they will capture or kill Sadr, who has been in Najaf and the nearby city of Kufa since the start of the uprising.
Two US soldiers and two members of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps were killed early on Sunday in north-west Baghdad, the official said.
Two more US troops were killed near Amara on Saturday when their convoy came under fire from small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade.
On Saturday, three British soldiers and an Iraqi policemen were wounded in a rare clash between British forces and the Mehdi Army of wanted Shia scholar Moqtada al-Sadr in Amara, 365 km south of Baghdad following a swoop.
A British military spokesman said numerous individuals had been arrested in a raid, which netted "significant amounts of arms, explosives and bomb-making equipment".
He said British forces sustained a number of casualties in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a convoy in the town. A British officer at the scene said three soldiers were wounded, one seriously.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein's former general entrusted with bringing security to the rebellious city of Falluja said on Sunday there were no foreign fighters there despite US insistence around 200 of them were holed up there.
US forces turned to General Jasim Mohamed Saleh, who used to belong to Saddam's feared Republican Guard, to help bring order back to Falluja after US Marines besieged the city for nearly a month said.
Saleh, speaking to Reuters in an interview, also said he had yet to receive information on the men wanted for the murder and mutilation of four American contractors which sparked the siege.
"There are no foreign fighters in Falluja and the local tribal leaders have told me the same," said Saleh, speaking in the city, among the most loyal to Saddam.
US forces turned to Saleh having failed to root out insurgents they estimate at up to 2,000 of the city's population of 300,000.
US authorities have said there may be something like 200 foreign fighters in Falluja, although the information is vague. They have demanded people in Falluja hand them over.
Saleh, who is being assisted by another former general, Abdullah Wael, said he represented the old Iraqi army, not the old regime.
Falluja residents had asked him to maintain security and stability in the city which he comes from, he said.
After overthrowing Saddam's regime last year, US-led authorities in Iraq set about jailing or sacking members of his ruling Baath party.
Now they are looking to bring back senior officers untainted by the excesses of the Saddam regime to command a new army.
"AMERICAN PROVOCATIONS" "The return of the Baathists is a peaceful solution and there are a large number of them who are loyal to the country, capable of administering the country in times of crisis," Saleh said.
Baathists who had committed crimes should not be allowed to return to government or the army, he said.
But throwing soldiers out of work by disbanding the 350,00-strong Iraqi armed helped stoke resistance to the US forces in Falluja, he said.
"The reasons for the resistance go back to the American provocation, the raids and abolishing the army which made Iraqis join the resistance," he said.
US forces are pulling back from the outskirts of the city, but remain around it and say they will give Saleh a few days to restore order.
Saleh said his force now numbered 1,200 and was growing every day.
"There is co-operation from Falluja's residents for our presence and our forces have spread with the police to the areas where Americans forces have withdrawn.
"By the end of the day, the Americans will have fully retreated from the northern and western sides of Falluja," he said.
General Jasim Mohamed Saleh, a former general in Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard, is unlikely to take charge in the volatile Iraqi city of Falluja and is still being vetted for a possible peacekeeping role, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, American trucker Thomas Hamill, held hostage in Iraq for three weeks after insurgents attacked his convoy, was safe with US forces after apparently escaping from his captors, the US military said on Sunday.
"It looked like it was an escape," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told a news conference in Baghdad.