BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq and Jordan engaged in a tit-for-tat withdrawal of ambassadors yesterday in a growing dispute over Shiite Muslim claims that Jordan is failing to block terrorists from entering Iraq, while U.S. forces killed 24 insurgents in a clash south of Baghdad.

An American convoy was traveling through the Salman Pak area, 20 miles southeast of Baghdad, when it was attacked, U.S. officials said. The military returned fire and killed 24 militants. Seven militants and six soldiers were also wounded.

No further details were available about the attack or the conditions of the wounded soldiers.

Meanwhile, a bomb blast killed a U.S. soldier and wounded three others yesterday in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said. The Task Force Liberty soldiers were on patrol near Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, when the bomb went off, the military said.

The wounded were evacuated to a coalition medical facility.

Another U.S. soldier was killed in action in Iraq's western Anbar province, the U.S. military said. That soldier was deployed with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and died yesterday.

At least 1,520 U.S. military members have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.

The Salman Pak clash was among the largest involving insurgents since the Jan. 30 elections, and came on a day of bloody attacks by militants throughout the country.

Yesterday's diplomatic row erupted even as a Jordanian court sentenced in absentia Iraq's most feared terrorist — who was born in Jordan — to a 15-year prison term.

As news emerged of the largely symbolic sentencing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose whereabouts are unknown, his al-Qaida in Iraq organization claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed a top anticorruption official in northern Mosul. Al-Zarqawi already has been sentenced to death twice by Jordan.

Yesterday's events capped a week of rising tensions that included a protest in which Shiite demonstrators raised the Iraqi flag over the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad and claims by the Shiite clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance that Jordan was allowing terrorists to slip into Iraq.

"Iraqis are feeling very bitter over what happened. We decided, as the Iraqi government, to recall the Iraqi ambassador from Amman to discuss this," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said.

Jordan acted first, when its Foreign Minister Hani al-Mulqi announced his charge d'affaires in Baghdad had been recalled to Amman.

"We are hoping that the Iraqi police will devise a plan to protect the embassy," al-Mulqi said. "Meanwhile, we have asked the charge d'affaires to come back because he was living in the embassy."

He added that other Jordanian diplomats will remain in Baghdad because they do not live in the embassy compound.

A military court sentenced al-Zarqawi to 15 years in jail and imprisoned an associate for three years for planning an attack on the Jordanian Embassy, the offices of the Jordanian military attache, and unspecified American targets, all in Iraq.

Also yesterday, in Iraq's north, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a government compound in Mosul, killing himself and Walid Kashmoula, the head of the Iraqi police anti-corruption department, officials said. Three others were injured. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.

Zebari, the foreign minister, said officials were nearing agreement on forming a new Iraqi government.

"I think we are very close to finalizing a deal on the formation of the new Iraqi transitional government," he said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"Hopefully before the end of March we will have a complete package to get on with the job."

In other violence yesterday:

• In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, militants jumped out of their car and opened fire on a policeman walking to work, police Maj. Sadoun Ahmed said. Police who went to collect the man's body also came under attack, prompting a gunfight that left three police and three of the attackers injured. Lt. Qassim Mohammed said the injured assailants were captured.

• In the southern city of Basra, attackers targeted a police patrol with a roadside bomb, killing one civilian and injuring a policeman, police Col. Karim al-Zeidi said.

• Insurgents lobbed mortar rounds into a neighborhood just outside the walls of an Iraqi army base in Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad, killing one civilian and injuring two others, said an official at theYarmouk Hospital.

• At a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baqouba, a car bomb injured 10 Iraqi soldiers and two civilians, police official Ahmed Mohammed said. The U.S. military said 12 Iraqi soldiers were injured in the blast.