Nine US soldiers killed in Iraq

At least nine US soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Iraq in 24 hours, as a mediator said he held positive talks with the US-led coalition on resolving a showdown with radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr.
The US military confirmed that five US marines were killed on Saturday in a daylong firefight with Iraqi insurgents near the Syrian border. It said enemy casualties were estimated to be 25 to 30 killed and an unknown number of wounded during the battle near the border town of Husaybah.
Three US soldiers and four Iraqis were also killed during clashes with supporters of Sadr near the southern city of Diwaniyah, according to the US military and a spokesman for the fugitive leader.
US military officials said another US soldier died of his wounds after a convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad on Saturday.
British troops on Sunday traded fire with Sadr loyalists in the southern Iraqi city of Amara where residents reported mortar attacks on the governor's office and British positions.
Hundreds of Palestinian refugees on Sunday staged symbolic funerals in Baghdad for slain Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi, assassinated by the Israeli military a day earlier in Gaza.
"The only response to the assassination of Rantissi is the continuation of the resistance and national unity," said one banner raised by the refugees who also declared a three-day mourning period.
General Babekr al-Zibari, 57, a Sunni Kurd from Mosul who organised the Kurdish peshmerga fighters and opposed Saddam Hussein for 30 years, has been given the key post of senior military advisor to a new Iraqi leadership.
SPANISH TROOPS PULLOUT: Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain, where the US-led war has been deeply unpopular, would withdraw its troops from Iraq as soon as possible.
"The Spanish troops in Iraq will be withdrawn as soon as possible and with maximum security," Zapatero said, a day after he formally took office following the March 14 win of his Socialist Party.
In the meantime, a spokesman for radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr called for the sending of UN peacekeeping troops to Iraq and demanded the immediate withdrawal of US-led occupation forces, in an interview with Bulgarian television broadcast Sunday.
"It is in the interest of the whole world to send peacekeeping forces under the UN flag" in Iraq, said Qais al-Khazaali, who is spokesman for Sadr's Mehdi militia. But "the occupation forces must withdraw from the occupied regions and must release political prisoners. The war will thus end," he said. "If the Americans continue to act on the ground," the war "in Vietnam will appear easy and simple" compared with what awaits them in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has informed Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Maher that Madrid plans to pull its troops out of Iraq "within 15 days", the foreign ministry here said Sunday.