Iraq Watch: June 24, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Near the war-torn city of Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy on Thursday killing two U.S. Marines and leaving three Marines and a Sailor missing and presumed dead the U.S. military announced on Friday.

Another 13 Marines, 11 of whom were women, were wounded in the bombing the statement said.

The suicide attack was claimed by the militant group al-Qaida in Iraq led by Jordanian born Abu Musab al-Zarqai.

On Friday, a day after the attack, Fallujah was in a virtual lockdown with U.S. forces telling residents over loudspeakers to stay inside their homes.

The bodies of nine people, six of whom had been beheaded, were found near Baghdad on Friday according to AFP.

An aide to Iraq's most powerful Shiite figure Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was killed Friday. Samara al-Baghdadi was shot to death along with two of his bodyguards in the al-Amin district of Baghdad.

In the capital on Thursday gunmen assasinated police Lt. Col. Majid Faisl Aziz as he was driving in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Amariyah police said on Friday. Majid Aziz was a member of the Interior Ministry's major crime division.

In Washington President Bush met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the White House on Friday. The two leaders vowed to stay the course in Iraq despite recent clamoring in America for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle-Eastern nation.

This disapproval was reaffirmed once again Friday when a AP-Ipsos poll found that 53% of Americans now believe the Iraq war was a mistake while 56% disapprove of the way the Bush administration has handled the conflict.