Six Marines were killed in western Iraq, the U.S. command said Tuesday. The Marines died Monday in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. Iraqi resistance fighters posted handbills in Haditha, claiming to have killed 10 U.S. soldiers, seizing some of their weapons.
Another Marine was killed Monday by a car bomb in Hit, 50 miles southeast of Haditha.
Elsewhere, at least four people died and 24 injured when a suicide car bomber blew himself up close to an American military convoy in central Baghdad on Tuesday, medics said. One US humvee was set ablaze and 14 other vehicles were damaged by the explosion, which occurred at around 1pm in the central Bab Alsharq area of the capital, AFP reported.
In another incident, the bodies of 12 men, two of them beheaded, were found on waste ground near a Baghdad school on Monday, an interior ministry official said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said parliament would discuss a draft constitution on August 15, keeping the country on track for a scheduled mid-October referendum on the post-Saddam Hussein charter .
"We shall conclude the drafting of the constitution and will hand over the text to parliament for debate on August 15," the chairman of the drafting committee, Sheikh Humam Hammudi, told parliament Monday, according to AFP.
The United States has pressured Iraqi leaders to keep to the timetable, amid fears a delay could undermine public confidence in the political reform process.
