Gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped a group of Westerners from a government building in Baghdad today and eight US soldiers were reported killed, making May the deadliest month this year for the U.S. military.
The gunmen seized the Westerners from a Finance Ministry building in eastern Baghdad.
A ministry employee who witnessed the kidnapping said three computer experts and several of their bodyguards were taken in the daring daylight raid.
The British and German governments said they were investigating reports their nationals were among those taken. The German government said it was not immediately able to substantiate Iraqi police reports that the experts were German.
Also today, at least 38 people were killed when a bomb on a parked minibus exploded in central Baghdad and a car bomb exploded in a busy market in a southwestern Shi'ite district.
The US military also announced that two of its soldiers died when their helicopter came down under enemy fire in Diyala province north of Baghdad yesterday. A quick reaction force heading to the crash site was ambushed by roadside bombs that killed six soldiers.
Their deaths, which happened as Americans observed Memorial Day services for their war dead, took the May death toll to 112. It is the highest montly toll since December 2006, when the same number died.
The US military has said it anticipated greater casualties when it began pouring thousands of extra troops into Baghdad and other areas as part of a security crackdown aimed at averting all-out sectarian civil war.
About 3,000 extra US troops have been sent to Diyala, a large, religiously and ethnically mixed province which has seen some of the worst recent violence, to fight mostly al-Qaeda militants.
US President George W Bush won a bruising battle against Democrats over war funding this month but is under growing pressure from some in his own Republican Party to show progress in an increasingly unpopular war or start bringing troops home.
A total of 3,463 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. The worst month for US forces was November 2004, when 137 were killed.