This news comes following a roadside explosion on Friday that killed 10 US Marines and wounded 11 more outside of the troubled Iraqi city of Fallujah, the US military said on Friday as they launched a new operation in the nearby city of Ramadi.
The deadly attack against a foot patrol occurred on Thursday, a US military statement said, and was the bloodiest single attack on US military since August.
The violence also coincided with the issue of a report by a Washington-based research group that suggested the insurgency was thriving and could get even stronger.
The marine patrol near Fallujah "was attacked with an IED [improvised explosive device] fashioned from several large artillery shells," the military said.
The deaths brought the US military toll in Iraq to 2,125 soldiers and defense personnel killed since the start of the US-led war in 2003, according to Pentagon figures.
The Fallujah blast came shortly after US and Iraqi forces launched a joint operation in nearby Ramadi where militants had staged a symbolic attack a day earlier.
Approximately 200 Iraqi army soldiers and 300 marines were taking part in Operation Shank, the fifth operation over the last few weeks targeting insurgents in the area around Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
The offensive was issued after residents of Ramadi, the capital of the agitated province of Al Anbar, reported on Thursday a sudden insurgent presence on the streets.
Rebels fired a rocket at a US-Iraqi checkpoint, and dozens of fighters briefly roamed unchecked and put up Al Qaeda posters.
However, US military officials played down the seriousness of the Ramadi attack and called the reports "spurious" propaganda.
Major General Rick Lynch said on Thursday that a series of operations over the last few months has been slowly clearing Al Anbar of insurgents by moving from the Syrian border town of Al Qaim, eastward down the Euphrates valley towards Ramadi and Fallujah.
According to Lynch these operations had dealt severe blows against the insurgents, especially the forces of Jordanian-born militant Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"He is struggling because we have taken away his freedom of movement," Lynch said.
A study released by the Washington Institute of Near East Studies on Thursday, however, suggested that the insurgency remained robust as ever and could grow a good deal stronger.
Researchers said the insurgency had managed to exploit only a fraction of the disgruntled minority Sunni Arab population with any kind of military training.
"Should the insurgency succeed in exploiting this untapped potential, it could greatly increase its military capabilities," they wrote.
The analysts said the insurgents had scored "important tactical and operational successes" while establishing themselves as a major force in the Sunni Arab community.
The study maintained that foreign jihadists represented only 5 to 7 percent of the insurgency and did not account for the majority of attacks or fatalities.
The tone of the report contrasted with the assertion in the "national strategy for victory in Iraq" unveiled on Wednesday by President George W. Bush, who said US forces were making "significant progress" in containing the insurgency.
Bush in his speech declined to give any kind of timetable for the reduction of US troops, saying it depended on the situation on the ground.
After a number of countries in the US-led coalition recently announced they would be cutting their troop levels in Iraq by 2006, British Minister of Defense John Reid paid a visit to the southern city of Basra to assess the readiness of Iraqi forces to assume more security responsibilities.
Reid had previously said British troops might begin leaving Iraq by next year, depending on conditions.
The lack of a concrete time table was criticized by Syrian ambassador to the United States Imad Mustapha, who said that Bush "decided on behalf of the Iraqi people what should happen in Iraq," flouting the wishes of Iraqis who want US troops out of their country.
Meanwhile, the kidnappers of four Western hostages in Iraq threatened on Friday to kill them unless all detainees in Iraqi and coalition prisons are released by December 8, Al Jazeera television reported on Friday.
The four Christian activists - including one American, a Briton and two Canadians - were kidnapped in Baghdad on November 26 and a fifth German archaeologist was abducted separately on November 25.
The threat was made in a video purportedly from the self-declared Brigades of the Swords of Right, which claimed to have seized an American, a Briton and two Canadians working for the Christian Peace Team.
It gave those it called "the people concerned with abductees affairs" until December 8 to meet its demands or said it would kill the four.
Its demand related to prisoners held in prisons of the Iraqi interior ministry and of what it called the occupation, especially the Bucca and Abu Ghraib prisons.
The statement was accompanied by a video showing the two Canadian hostages being offered food. They and the British hostage were also shown calling for an end to the US and British military presence in Iraq.
Among other pleas, their release has been called for by Iraq's leading Sunni religious group, the Committee of Muslim Scholars, which has in the past been instrumental in securing the freeing of hostages.
Radical Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr issued a statement appealing for the release of the German national, a 43-year-old woman who converted to Islam and had been living in Iraq for 10 years.
A policeman and his brother were gunned down in a drive by shooting in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, while in the northern oil-hub of Kirkuk, an army officer and the bodyguard of a government official were killed, police said.
On Thursday night, a Shia was killed and his brother wounded by gunmen dressed as Iraqi soldiers in Baquba.
Only a day earlier, an extremist Sunni group had distributed leaflets in Baquba, north of Baghdad, calling for the beheading of Shias.
© 2005 Agence France-Presse
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