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3 GIs, 2 Iraqis killed in Baghdad attack

REUTERS, Tikrit
Guerrillas killed three US soldiers and two Iraqi civil defense officials in a bomb attack north of Baghdad yesterday as Washington insisted it would hand over political power in Iraq in mid-2004 as scheduled.
The deaths take the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the invasion last year to just one short of 500.
The mounting death toll is a problem for President Bush as he seeks re-election in November this year.
Bush held talks with the US governor of Iraq Paul Bremer on Friday after which Bremer said Washington was willing to adjust plans for handing over power to appease Iraq's top Shia cleric, but
was unlikely to meet his key demand for elections this year.
He also stressed that the June 30 deadline for transferring power to an Iraqi government would not be extended.
Bremer will meet UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan on Monday and is expected to press him to send a UN team to Iraq to convince Shias that direct elections are not feasible or suggest a workable compromise.
Bush appears keen to show that the Iraq war has been brought to a successful end. He declared major combat over on May 1 last year but at least 231 soldiers have been killed in hostilities since then.
At least 115 members of general infantry (GI) were killed in the invasion itself and another 153
have died in accidents.
In the latest attack, a huge roadside bomb near the town of Taji, 30 km (19 miles) north of Baghdad, set a Bradley armored vehicle on fire and killed five inside, said Lieutenant Colonel William Macdonald of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division.
Apart from the three US and two Iraqi deaths, two US soldiers were injured, he said. Troops also arrested three Iraqi men in a sweep of the area shortly afterwards when a truck they were traveling in was found to contain bomb-making material.
Meanwhile, Japanese troops arrived in Kuwait yesterday ahead of a humanitarian mission in Iraq in
3 GIs, 2 Iraqis
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the country's most controversial military deployment since World War II.
The troops move into Iraq next week and any casualty could rock Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government.
"We are making history today. It is the first time that we have Japanese troops going into a combat zone since World War II," US forces spokesman Captain Randall Baucom said.
In Washington, Bremer expressed "doubts" about Shia demands for elections before the transfer of power, but said: "These are questions that, obviously, need to be looked at."
He said Washington may alter the way a transitional Iraqi assembly is selected and make other "clarifications, " but gave few details.