KEY POINTS:
BAGHDAD - Two people were killed in mortar attacks on Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone today, the second serious attack in two days, as a search for three US soldiers held by al Qaeda south of the capital intensified.
Violence raged across Iraq, with police confirming today that 45 people had been killed the previous day by a chlorine gas truck bomb in Diyala, one of the most volatile provinces since a security crackdown began three months ago.
The truck laden with canisters of the deadly gas was detonated in a market area in Abu Sayda, a mostly Shi'ite town north of Baghdad, police said.
US President George W Bush is deploying 30,000 more troops in a last-ditch effort to stop a slide into all-out sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam Hussein.
Bush is under growing pressure from Democrats to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. More than 3400 US troops have been killed since the 2003 invasion to oust Saddam.
The US Senate voted overwhelmingly today against withdrawing all combat forces from Iraq by March 31 next year.
The vote was orchestrated to ease the passage of a war-funding bill so that Congress negotiators can work on a compromise that Bush could sign by the end of May.
Many more troops are being sent to Baghdad but extra forces have also been sent to Diyala to fight entrenched Sunni Arab insurgents and militants from al Qaeda, which Bush now regards as the greatest threat in Iraq.
Baghdad's Green Zone, supposedly the most secure area in the capital and home to Iraq's parliament, government ministries and the US embassy, has been hit by three serious mortar or rocket attacks this month.
A US embassy spokesman said two Iraqis were killed and 10 other people wounded when up to 10 mortar rounds landed inside the sprawling complex of Saddam-era monuments and palaces.
None of the dead or injured were embassy employees or contractors, the spokesman said.
Mortar rounds or rockets are often fired at the Green Zone, but insurgents appear to have stepped up their attacks recently.
South of Baghdad, thousands of US and Iraqi troops continued combing farmland for three US soldiers missing since an ambush near Mahmudiya on Saturday.
The US military holds out hope that the missing soldiers are still alive after the ambush in which four US troops and an Iraqi army translator were killed, one of the worst attacks on US troops since the 2003 invasion.
Major-General William Caldwell, the chief US military spokesman in Baghdad, said that evidence had been found of a gunbattle after an initial roadside bomb attack on two parked Humvee vehicles.
"Obviously it appears there was a firefight that did ensue and we don't know the exact condition of our three men," Caldwell told a news conference.
Tens of thousands of leaflets seeking information about the missing soldiers have been distributed around Mahmudiya and nearby Yusifiya and a reward of US$200,000 ($275,000) is being offered.
The al Qaeda-led Islamic State in Iraq has not offered any proof that it has the soldiers or if they are still alive.
Further south, clashes between militias loyal to firebrand anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi government forces killed at least eight people and wounded 40 more in Nasiriya. Three Iraqi soldiers were among the dead.
In the northern city of Mosul, four policemen were killed and 30 people were wounded when 200 insurgents attacked an Iraqi police station and a prison and set off a string of bombs.
Insurgents infrequently attack jails in Mosul in a bid to free prisoners.
- REUTERS
