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Ten US troops have been killed in Iraq over the weekend and three more are missing after a helicopter crashed in the restive west of the country.
The mounting US death toll came as US President George W. Bush, whose administration is under mounting pressure to find a way out of the conflict, prepared to hold White House talks with a powerful Iraqi Shiite leader.
The military said the Marine Corps Sea Knight helicopter with 16 people on board crashed Sunday into a body of water in the western province of Al-Anbar.
“The incident does not appear to be a result of enemy action and is currently under investigation,” it said Monday, without identifying the exact location. Anbar contains two large lakes and the Euphrates river.
Twelve people survived the crash while one marine was pulled out of the water but could not be revived.
“Search and recovery efforts are ongoing for the remaining three unaccounted servicemembers who have been listed as Duty Status Unknown,” the military said.
The CH-46 Sea Knight entered service in the early 1960s and is one of the oldest models in use with the US military. The entire 218-strong fleet was briefly taken out of service in 2002 after faults were found.
The US military death toll in Iraq — which dipped last month after a high in October during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan — has climbed back to an average of three per day in the first four days of December.
Fatalities announced on Monday brought to 2,895 the number of US military losses since the US-led invasion in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Later Monday, Bush was expected to hold talks with Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim on the situation in a country which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said is embroiled in bloodshed worse than a civil war.
Nearly 150 Iraqis have died over the last two days alone in sectarian and insurgent attacks.
“When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war — this is much worse,” Annan told the BBC.
Daily attacks across Iraq and primarily in Baghdad continue to drive a deep wedge between the warring Shiite and Sunni communities, and the sectarian bloodletting is expected come up when Hakim meets Bush.
Hakim, who heads the pro-Iranian Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a powerful Shiite party in the ruling coalition, is a key figure in post-Saddam Iraq.
He does not hold aa post in the current government but wields enormous influence due to SCIRI's dominant role in Iraq's police forces and to the power of the organisation's armed militia, the Badr Brigade.
The two leaders are expected to discuss how to rein in the brigade and other Shiite militias that are allegedly involved in sectarian killings of Sunni Arabs and under the influence of Tehran.
His visit comes as the Bush administration is re-evaluating its strategy in Iraq in the wake of the November 7 legislative election, in which Republicans lost control of Congress to rival anti-war Democrats.
The debate was fuelled Sunday by a leaked memo, written last month by outgoing US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in which he argued that the US strategy needed “a major adjustment.”
Rumsfeld called for a massive redeployment of US forces away from combat zones, speeded-up training of Iraqi security forces and buying support from Iraqi warlords with US cash.
On Monday, gunmen killed seven people including four employees of the department of agriculture of the Diyala province, in the restive city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, police said.
“The four were travelling in a car in Baquba when gunmen shot them,” police Lieutenant Ammar Khalif said.
Meanwhile, US forces killed “two terrorists and detained six” in northern Baghdad, the military said.
