Death toll rises in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Roadside bombs, which have become the most lethal threat to American troops in Iraq, killed two more U.S. soldiers Sunday, one in the capital and another in the volatile Sunni Muslim town of Fallujah, 30 miles to the west. The Baghdad attack also claimed the lives of two Iraqi children.

Meanwhile, the death toll in a series of tightly synchronized car bombs and rocket attacks a day earlier in the southern city of Karbala rose to 19 — seven coalition soldiers and 12 Iraqis. Throughout the fog-shrouded day, tearful funeral processions wound their way through the streets of the Shiite Muslim holy city, and medical officials said many of the nearly 200 people wounded remained hospitalized.

Sunday’s powerful blast on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, which killed a member of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, wounded five U.S. soldiers, their Iraqi interpreter and eight members of the Iraqi civil defense force, said military spokesman Capt. Jason Beck.

The two children killed had been walking close to where the bomb went off, military officials said.

"It’s the worst one of these I’ve ever seen," said a 24-year-old soldier from the 2nd Armored Division’s 37th Battalion, who declined to give his name. "It’s a very heavily trafficked area, and it was a really big bomb."

The soldier killed outside Fallujah was a member of the 82nd Airborne Division who was traveling in a convoy just outside the Euphrates River town, about 30 miles west of Baghdad. Three other soldiers were wounded in that attack.

Roadside bombs — "improvised explosive devices," as the military calls them — have become the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents taking aim at U.S. troops. The bombs are concealed in trash piles, empty cans, cardboard boxes, old piping, even dead chickens.

Field commanders say that lately, the bombers have been planting secondary devices meant to kill and maim troops arriving to help those hurt in the initial attack. Last week, a U.S. soldier was killed trying to disarm an explosive device.

Meanwhile, Japan is willing to forgive the "vast majority" of its Iraqi debt if other Paris Club creditor nations do the same, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement todayduring a visit by U.S. envoy James Baker. Iraq owes Japan $4.1 billion along with another $3.5 billion in penalty fees.