3 Iraqis, GI killed in fighting

"Two men were killed and eight wounded, including a man, two women and five children," said Jaffar Abdul Hussein, deputy director of the Sadr City hospital.

A US marine was killed in action on Saturday in Al-Anbar province, the US military said in a statement yesterday.

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A man was also reported dead and another wounded at Thawra hospital, said the facility's director Qassem Saddam.

Since April, fighting has rocked the crowded Shia district, thought by the US army to hold between 2.5 and three million people, when US soldiers and rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army militia began to clash almost daily.

The army had no immediate information on the latest violence.

A Sadr City resident, Mohammed Hamoud, 28, indicated the clashes began when a US patrol was ambushed after midnight.

"The fighters started firing light arms and antitank rockets," he said. "The shooting lasted until dawn."

Meanwhile, tribal leader Sheikh Ezzedine al-Bayati, a member of the local council in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, was killed in a roadside ambush, an Iraqi Civil Defence Corps officer said.