Bombs kill 6 Marines; 29 insurgents die in U.S. offensive

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Bomb blasts killed six Marines in western Iraq, and U.S. forces killed 29 militants in U.S. offensives aimed at uprooting al-Qaida insurgents ahead of the country's vote on a new constitution, the military said Friday.

The American deaths brought to 1,950 the number of U.S. troops who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In southern Iraq, British troops detained 12 militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric in the city of Basra, accusing them of carrying out recent attacks on British and U.S. troops, officials said Friday, amid charges Iran is helping fighters carry out deadlier bombings.

Eight days before Iraqis were to go to the polls to approve or reject the new constitution, officials were still waiting to get copies of the document to pass out to voters. Distribution began in a few Baghdad neighborhoods, but did not appear to have begun elsewhere.

Some shopkeepers in Baghdad refused to hand out the document and some people refused to take it, fearing reprisals by militants determined to wreck the crucial Oct. 15 referendum.

"Some people are excited to take it. Others are refusing to touch it," said Mohammed Ali, a shopkeeper in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Saydiya who handed out about 150 copies Friday.

"I know some merchants who have refused to accept copies for distribution because they fear retaliation by the insurgents," Ali said in an interview at his shop.

Al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni-led insurgent groups have launched a wave of violence in the past two weeks that has killed more than 290 people, many of them Shiites. Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has declared war on Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.

The Pentagon said Friday the military in Iraq had intercepted a letter from the second in command of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, to al-Zarqawi, urging him to avoid bombing mosques and slaughtering hostages to avoid alienating the masses.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the letter also demonstrates "detailed planning and intent on the part of the insurgents in Iraq to one day control that country and to really try to extend their extremism to neighboring countries."

The U.S. military is waging two large offensives in western Iraq — operations "Iron Fist" and "River Gate" — to oust al-Qaida in Iraqi militants from a half-dozen towns along the Euphrates River valley.