BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide bomber in an explosives-laden vehicle struck a convoy carrying U.S. Marines in Fallujah, most of them women, the military said yesterday. At least two Americans were killed, including a woman.

Three other Marines and a sailor thought to have been in the vehicle convoy were listed as missing pending identification of remains, raising the possibility that the death count from the incident on Thursday could rise to six.

At least 13 other Marines, 11 of them women, were wounded in the incident, the military announced. It came days after American officials hailed the relative quiet in the onetime insurgent bastion as a sign of progress in Iraq.

A Pentagon official said the female Marine, identified as Lance Cpl. Holly A. Charette, 21, from Cranston, R.I., was killed in the bomb blast. The second Marine, a male, identified as Cpl. Chad Powell, 22, from northern Louisiana, was killed by small-arms fire that was part of the attack by militants.

Female Marines are used at checkpoints to search Muslim women "in order to be respectful of Iraqi cultural sensitivities," a military statement said. It is considered insulting for a male Marine to search a female Muslim.

Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in frontline combat roles — in the infantry, armor or artillery, for example. Thirty-six female troops have died since the war began, including the one that was announced yesterday, said Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman. Thirty-four were Army, one Navy and one Marine.

The high number of female casualties in yesterday's attack spoke to the lack of any real front lines in Iraq, where U.S. troops are battling a raging insurgency and American women have taken part in more combat than in any previous military conflict.

Bush to speak on Iraq


President Bush will deliver a major address to U.S. troops and the nation about Iraq on Tuesday night from the U.S. military base at Fort Bragg, N.C., the White House said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the speech would be delivered at 5 p.m. PDT, and that the White House has asked U.S. television networks to air the address live.

Tuesday marks one year since Iraq gained transitional sovereignty under the U.S. plan to hand over control to an Iraqi government.

Reuters and Bloomberg News

The women involved are part of what the Marines call "lioness" teams, the Pentagon officials said, a term denoting women who serve with men on occasional patrols and raids as well as at checkpoints. The sailor listed as missing and possibly dead was part of Navy contingents of Marine units who serve as medics and religious personnel.

Pentagon officials said the convoy was returning to Camp Fallujah after conducting checkpoint operations in the city.

Fallujah is a former insurgents' fortress that was invaded by U.S. forces at great cost last November; it also is the city where an Iraqi mob hung the mutilated bodies of two U.S. contractors from a bridge.

The Marines have taken great pains to prevent insurgents from re-establishing a base inside Fallujah, conducting searches of every person and vehicle entering the city. Permanent residents have been provided with identification cards. Several thousand U.S. and Iraqi troops have been posted to the city and its entrances and exits.

A resumption of violence in Fallujah could deliver a setback to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials, who have upheld last year's operation in the city as one of the positive military developments in more than two years of counter-insurgency efforts.

The State Department says about 90,000 of Fallujah's 300,000 residents have returned to the city, which benefited from Saddam Hussein's 23 years in power, as did other cities in the Sunni-dominated area north and west of Baghdad, and became a center of resistance to the U.S.-backed regime.

Yesterday's attack, which raised the death toll among U.S. military members since the beginning of the war to 1,731, came as Americans have grown increasingly concerned about the conflict. One year ago, 842 U.S. service members had died in Iraq, compared with 194 on that date in 2003.

News of the Marine deaths came as President Bush played host to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari at the White House.

Bush said the United States will never set a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and predicted victory in what he repeatedly described as a difficult battle against fanatical "killers."

The insurgents "know it bothers people to see death, and it does," Bush said. "It bothers me, it bothers American citizens, it bothers Iraqis. They're trying to shake our will."

Jafari, speaking mostly in Arabic, paid tribute to all of the Americans killed in Iraq and said their sacrifice will one day change the Middle East.

Bush's remarks were a preface to a major prime-time speech he will give Tuesday evening from Fort Bragg, N.C. He will try to reframe the Iraq debate, in order to maintain public tolerance for an open-ended military commitment at a time when polls suggest patience is dwindling.

"I'm not giving up on the mission," Bush said.

He said there were reasons to be "optimistic for what's taking place," citing the training of Iraqi troops and progress toward a new, democratically elected government.

While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have portrayed an insurgency in its last throes, U.S. military officials told Congress and administration officials this week that the amalgam of foreign terrorists, Saddam loyalists and anti-American Iraqis has not been noticeably weakened over the past six months.

Bush, under pressure from Democrats, Republicans and even some of his own aides to offer a more candid assessment of the situation in Iraq, repeatedly stressed the difficulties of defeating terrorists.

"No question ... it's difficult," Bush said. "It's tough work. And it's hard. The hardest part of my job is to comfort the family members who have lost a loved one, which I intend to do when I go down to North Carolina on Tuesday."

Public support for Bush's handling of the war is the lowest ever, recent polls show.

A new AP-Ipsos survey released yesterday showed 53 percent of Americans now believe the war was a mistake, the highest level of opposition found so far. In December 2003, nine months after the U.S.-led invasion, two-thirds of Americans said they agreed with the decision to go to war.

Bush's remarks were reported by The Washington Post. The Associated Press provided additional information on war casualties.