A roadside bomb killed three US soldiers in Iraq yesterday, pushing the US death toll closer to the 4,000 mark at the start of the sixth year of the war for US troops.
The deaths, which brought the number of US soldiers killed since the US-led invasion in 2003 to 3,996, came three days after President George W. Bush said the United States was on track to victory in Iraq.
In an upbeat speech marking the fifth anniversary of the war, Bush acknowledged the "high cost in lives and treasure" but said a US troop build-up in Iraq had reduced violence there and opened the door to a strategic victory in the war on terror.
The war is a major issue in the US presidential campaign, with Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton calling for an early troop withdrawal timetable.
Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain wants to keep troops in Iraq until it is more stable.
The US military said the three soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb blew up near their vehicle northwest of Baghdad. Two Iraqi civilians also died in the attack. It gave no further details about where the incident occurred.
Roadside bombs are the biggest killers of soldiers in Iraq.
On Friday, a US soldier died from wounds sustained from "indirect fire", a term commonly used by the military to refer to a mortar or rocket attack, south of Baghdad.
Six members of a US-backed neighbourhood patrol group were killed early yesterday in a US helicopter strike on their checkpoint in Salahuddin province, police and a local tribal leader said.
The US military said it had conducted a helicopter attack in the province, but denied it had attacked a checkpoint. It said the strike killed six men suspected of placing roadside bombs. Investigations were under way, the military said.
The US military has credited the formation of what it calls Concerned Local Citizen groups (CLCs), also known as Awakening Councils, for playing a crucial role in a 60 per cent drop in violence across Iraq since last June.
The mostly Sunni Arab neighbourhood patrols have some 90,000 men in western Anbar and provinces north and south of Baghdad. The US military pays them $300 a month to patrol their neighbourhoods and man checkpoints.
Tribal leader Abu Faruq said yesterday's air strike took place on a CLC checkpoint near the town of Ishaqi, 100 km north of Baghdad.
"They knew all this area is under my control, and all the men were in uniform and were not firing their weapons, so why did this happen? If Awakening checkpoints are hit this way, it is a disaster," he said.
The incident is the latest in a string of disputes between the CLCs and the US military. In November, US warplanes attacked a CLC checkpoint north of Baghdad, killing 25 men.
In February, CLCs in Jurf al-Sukr, south of Baghdad, said US forces killed three of their number, and in the same month, neighbourhood patrols in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, temporarily stopped working to demand more pay and the removal of a local police chief.