Two US servicemen were missing in Iraq's restive Anbar province after their helicopter crashed, the US military revealed today.
The helicopter went down with six crew aboard yesterday. Four survived and were in a stable condition. It is claimed that the crash did not appear to have been the result of enemy action.
"We are using all the resources available to find our missing comrades," said Marine spokesman Major Riccoh Player in a statement.
In a measure of increasing violence, the Baghdad morgue said today that 1,815 bodies had been taken in last month, the highest number since the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine.
Nearly 12,000 Iraqi and US troops were being moved into the capital today as part of the plan to stem sectarian violence in the capital.
"We must dramatically reduce the level of violence in Baghdad that is fuelling sectarianism," said Maj Gen JD Thurman, commander of the coalition forces in Baghdad.
Much of the violence has been blamed on sectarian militias that have stepped up a campaign of tit-for-tat killings since the February 22nd bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.
Some of the reinforcements have already been on patrol in the mostly Sunni neighbourhood in western Baghdad, scene of armed confrontations between Sunni and Shiite gunmen.
But the violence continued today as a roadside bomb exploded near a US patrol in eastern Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Habibiya, killing one bystander and injuring one US soldier.
Police today also found the bodies of three men who were shot in the head and dumped in two locations in southwestern Baghdad.
Violence continued in other parts of the country, which is on the brink of civil war.
In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, four people were killed and 16 wounded in a US airstrike late yesterday.
A mosque and nearby houses in the city were heavily damaged in the blast.
Gunmen on motorcycles assassinated Colonel Qassim Abdel-Qadir, the head of administration of an Iraqi army division in the southern city of Basra.
In Samarra, a policeman was killed and another wounded when they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb late yesterday.
Many of the militias responsible for sectarian violence are linked to political parties that are part of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's national unity government, and they are reluctant to disband their armed wings unless others do the same.
The US ambassador to Iraq , Zalmay Khalilzad, said there were talk under way between various Sunni and Shiite groups to reach agreements and sign pledges to end sectarian fighting.
Agencies