Three American soldiers killed in Anbar province

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Three U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi woman translator were killed in separate incidents Saturday, while the country's largest Sunni Arab party appealed to authorities to end a military crackdown in Sunni villages northeast of Baghdad.

The three Americans were assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and died in fighting in the western province of Anbar, the U.S. military said.

They were the first U.S. fatalities reported in Iraq since Tuesday, raising the number of U.S. personnel killed this month to eight. The average of one death a day is down sharply from a rate of more than two a day in recent months.

Iraqi police said the translator, whose name was not released, was slain in a drive-by shooting in southwestern Baghdad. She worked for the Americans but was off-duty at the time, police Capt. Maithem Abdul-Razaq said.

Interpreters and others working for the Americans have long been targeted by insurgents who accuse them of "collaborating" with "occupation forces."

In a statement Saturday, the Iraqi Islamic Party said U.S. and Iraqi troops had surrounded 15 mostly Sunni villages near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, making it difficult for civilians to move around.

The statement called on Iraqi and U.S. forces to allow food and medicine to enter the villages and compensate farmers for damage to their crops.

Last week, the Iraqi military announced operations in the Muqdadiyah area after an increase in insurgent activity. The mostly farm area sits astride a highway between Baghdad and Kurdish areas to the north and is in a province where tensions are high between Shiites and Sunnis.

The Iraqi Islamic Party is headed by one of Iraq's two vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, who the Americans hope can persuade disaffected fellow Sunnis to abandon the insurgency and participate in political life so the United States can begin withdrawing troops.

Two influential U.S. senators visiting Iraq said they were assured on Saturday by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, that his unity government will reach out to Sunni Arabs and crack down on Shiite militias blamed for much of the country's sectarian violence.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said al-Maliki told them it would be "feasible" to redeploy a small portion of U.S. troops "perhaps this year" because more Iraqi soldiers have been trained and sent into the fight.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said the prime minister also seems serious about encouraging insurgents to accept amnesty and rejoin the mainstream and "appears to be prepared to take concerted action against militias" blamed for rising sectarian violence.

Nevertheless, the government, which took office in May, faces a formidable task as it strives to calm sectarian tensions, cut a deal to end the insurgency and restore stability.

Iraqi police reported several killings in Baghdad on Saturday and many seemed tied to the animosities between Shiites and Sunnis.

Gunmen opened fire on a Shiite family trying to move out of a religiously mixed neighborhood for the Shiite city of Karbala. Police said five relatives were wounded in the attack in Dora, where sectarian tensions run high.

Also in Dora, gunmen in two cars stopped a vehicle on a street, forced the two passengers to get out and killed them in front of horrified bystanders, police reported.

Gunmen killed three people working in an ice cream shop in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Nahrawan, police Lt. Fikrat Mohammed said.

Three mortar shells exploded in a mostly Shiite area of southern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding three children, police said.

A car bomb exploded in a public garage near a Shiite mosque late Saturday in the city's western Jihad district, killing two people and wounding nine and causing slight damage to the mosque, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq.

Police also reported finding four bodies in eastern and western Baghdad that appeared to be victims of sectarian death squads.

Gunmen in two speeding cars opened fire on a Sunni mosque in west Baghdad's Ghazaliya neighborhood. Mosque guards returned fire and the attackers fled, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

The incidents occurred a day after at least 17 people died in a wave of bombings and mortar attacks on mostly Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq. A Sunni cleric was also kidnapped in the capital, a Sunni official said.

Sectarian violence has forced thousands of Iraqis to move to different neighborhoods or cities where their sect is predominant. The Interior Ministry estimated earlier this month that nearly 4,000 families had been forced to relocate in the Baghdad area alone.