愛污传媒

BAGHDAD - A body recovered by Iraqi police from the Euphrates River south of Baghad on Wednesday was identified as one of three U.S. soldiers abducted in an ambush claimed by al Qaeda, relatives and officials said.

A second body was also found in the area but there was no immediate word if it was also one of the missing soldiers, said a U.S. military official who requested anonymity.

Military officials told the family of Pte. Joseph Anzack of Torrance, Calif., a commanding officer identified the remains recovered from the river but DNA tests were still pending.

"They told us: 'We're sorry to inform you the body we found has been identified as Joe,'" said the soldier's aunt, Debbie Anzack.

"I'm in disbelief."

Anzack, 20, vanished along with the two others after their combat team was ambushed May 12 about 30 kilometres outside Baghdad. Five others, including an Iraqi, were killed in the ambush, subsequently claimed by al Qaida.

U.S. forces also disclosed nine more deaths Wednesday, raising to 20 the number of troops killed in four days.

The spike in U.S. deaths and the discovery of the bodies come at a difficult moment for Washington, where the President George W. Bush's administration and Congress are struggling to agree on funding for the unpopular war. The search for the captured soldiers has also taken thousands of troops out of the pool of forces for the Baghdad security crackdown.

Across Iraq, at least 104 people were killed in sectarian violence or found dead Wednesday, including 32 who perished in suicide bombings. One bombing took place 100 kilometres west of the capital, the other in a city to the east near the Iranian border.

In the search for U.S. soldiers ambushed and captured May 12, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces have trudged in temperatures above 43 degrees C through desert and farmland, sometimes wading in sewage-polluted irrigation ditches.

Maj.-Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the remains, later identified as those of Anzack, were recovered by Iraqi police.

Witnesses said the police using civilian boats searched for other bodies on the river in Musayyib, about 65 kilometres south of Baghdad and U.S. troops intensified their presence on a nearby bridge as helicopters flew overhead, witnesses said.

Hassan al-Jibouri, 32, said he saw the body with head wounds and whip marks on its back floating on the river Wednesday morning. He and others then alerted police.

The military has warned U.S. casualties were likely to increase as troops made more frequent patrols during the security crackdown in Baghdad, now in its fourth month.

The other missing soldiers are Spc. Alex Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.; and Pte. Byron Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich.

At Jimenez's father's home in Lawrence, a former mill city north of Boston, a yellow ribbon also was tied on the front door. Ramon Jimenez, who speaks Spanish, said through a translator in a cellphone conversation that he has been bouyed by the support of friends and family.

"The hope is very high that God is going to give Alex back to him," said Wendy Luzon, a family friend who translated the conversation and has been serving as a spokeswoman for the family.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, announced he is ready to fill six cabinet seats vacated by politicians loyal to radical anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in a mass resignation last month.

Al-Sadr, who went into hiding in Iran at the start of the Baghdad security crackdown, ordered his ministers to quit the government over al-Maliki's refusal to call for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.

The deaths of the seven soldiers and two marines in a series of attacks Monday and Tuesday brought the U.S. death toll for the month to at least 80. Last month, 104 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq.

One of Wednesday's suicide bombings hit a cafe in the town Mandali, on the Iranian border 100 kilometres east of Baghdad. The attacker walked into the packed cafe and blew himself up, killing 22 people and wounding 13, police said.

The cafe in the mixed Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish city was popular with police officers -- but none was there at the time, police said. A man in his 30s wearing a heavy jacket despite the heat was seen walking into the cafe seconds before the blast, police said.

In the second suicide assault, a bomber blew himself up in the house of two brothers who were supporting a Sunni alliance opposed to al-Qaida in Anbar province, killing 10 people, including the men, their wives and children, police Lt.-Col. Jabar Rasheed Nayef said.

The attacker, a 17-year-old neighbour, broke into the house of the two men, Sheik Mohammed Ali and police Lt.-Col. Abed Ali and detonated his bomb belt late Tuesday in Albo Obaid, about 100 kilometres west of Baghdad.

The targeted men were part of the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of Sunni tribal leaders backing the government's fight against al Qaeda.

In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said U.S. and Iraqi officials were planning to increase again the number of Iraqi security forces to help quell violence in the country.

The review was undertaken as Bush's new military-political team in Iraq -- commander Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker -- assessed strategy for the four-year-old war.

"Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have been working on the specific tactics" needed for the strategy Bush announced in January -- a troop buildup to calm Baghdad so Iraqis can make political and economic progress, Johndroe said.

About 337,000 Iraqi police and soldiers had been trained and equipped as of May 9, U.S. Defence Department statistics show. Officials hope to have the currently planned 365,000 in place by the end of the year, Brig.-Gen. Michael Jones, deputy director for political-military affairs in the Middle East for the joint chiefs of staff, told legislators Tuesday.