8 U.S. troops among scores dead in Iraq

BAGHDAD – Eight American soldiers were killed in roadside bomb attacks Sunday, one of the highest single-day death tolls this year. They were among 12 U.S. troops whose deaths were announced on a day when car bombs killed scores of Iraqis across the country, threatening to deepen sectarian tensions.

A senior U.S. commander said Sunday that the military was bracing for a rise in the casualty rate in the coming months, as an ongoing security offensive attempts to tame the catastrophic violence and stabilize Baghdad.

“All of us believe that in the next 90 days, you’ll probably see an increase in American casualties because we are taking the fight to the enemy,” Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Army’s Task Force Marne, told reporters Sunday. “This is the only way we can win the fight.”

Even as insurgents take aim at U.S. troops, they have stepped up their attacks on so-called soft targets, especially in Shiite areas of Baghdad, in an apparent attempt to stoke sectarian warfare. In the deadliest such attack Sunday, a car bomb explosion tore through one of the capital’s biggest markets, killing 42 people, police said. The blast, in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Baiyaa, ravaged buildings, scorched vehicles and injured at least 67 people, police said.

In Sunday’s deadliest attack on U.S. troops, a roadside bomb struck a convoy in Diyala province, killing six soldiers and a journalist and wounding two soldiers, the military said.

U.S. military officials said the journalist was European but did not give further details because the family had not been notified.

Two soldiers, one in southern Baghdad, the other north of the capital, were also killed Sunday in roadside bomb attacks on their convoys, the military said. Two Marines were killed during combat operations Saturday, and a U.S. soldier died in a bomb attack in western Baghdad on Friday, the military said Sunday.

Another soldier died in a noncombat incident in Tikrit on Sunday.