32 soldiers have died in Iraq this month

BAGHDAD — A flare-up of fighting in Iraq, particularly in the western Anbar province where the Sunni insurgency is strong, has made the first week in December one of the deadliest in the war.

At least 32 U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month, according to the Defense Department. Eleven died Wednesday. Another soldier wounded Wednesday died Thursday, the military said.

Most of the deaths — at least 18 — were in Anbar province, a large stretch of desert west of Baghdad where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been unable to crush insurgents. Most of Anbar's residents are members of the Sunni Muslim minority that ruled Iraq for centuries before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

At least 10 U.S. troops have died this month in or around Ramadi, one of the largest cities in Anbar province.

Fighting in Ramadi on Wednesday claimed the lives of two Army soldiers and two Marines killed by a roadside bomb, and two soldiers shot to death.

Also Wednesday, five soldiers from the Army's 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division died when a bomb hit their vehicle in or near the northern city of Kirkuk, the military said.

At least 2,919 American service members have died in the Iraq war.

At least 23 Iraqis died Thursday in a series of bombings and shootings, police said. Among the dead were a 7-year-old girl and two college professors. Baghdad police also found 35 bullet-riddled bodies.

Doctor testifies at Saddam trial

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A doctor testified Thursday at Saddam Hussein's genocide trial about struggling to treat a crowd of vomiting villagers suffering from bubbles and rashes on their skin and blindness, sectarian violence raged on the streets outside.

Only a few reporters and about two dozen observers came to view the proceedings. Saddam himself remained subdued unlike in his previous trial, where he frequently broke into angry outbursts.

With Saddam already sentenced to death for the executions of 148 men and boys from Dujail and horrific violence an everyday event in Baghdad and beyond, the former president's current trial for the Anfal chemical-weapons campaign against Iraq's Kurds in the 1980s has been largely ignored here.

Although defense lawyers had vowed to boycott the trial, some showed up this week, but they, too, remained quiet Thursday.

Two Kurdish doctors testified anonymously about their first encounters with victims of chemical-weapons attacks in Kurdish villages in 1987, one describing an assault near the village of Khetia at dusk on April 16 as 10 helicopters and a half-dozen military planes dropped bombs containing a sweet-smelling gas on the nearby countryside.

By 3 a.m., a crowd of villagers had reached his clinic seeking treatment, including women and children blinded by the gas and with other telltale symptoms. A defense attorney challenged the doctor's description of the bombs as "chemical weapons."

Prosecutors estimate that 180,000 Kurds died during the Anfal campaign.

Search for soldier may increase tension

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In pursuit of a missing soldier, U.S. and Iraqi Special Forces units have staged dozens of operations in Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that once were ruled off-limits by the Shiite-dominated government.

The raids into territory dominated by the Al Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, risk exacerbating tensions within the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has shown a new willingness to confront paramilitary forces believed to take part in kidnappings and death-squad operations.

U.S. Army Spc. Ahmed Qusai Taei, 41, an Iraqi-American immigrant, disappeared Oct. 23 while making an unauthorized visit to relatives in Baghdad.

U.S. military officials think Taei is being held in Sadr City, and have offered a $50,000 reward to help find him.

"Over 2,100 U.S. troops and 1,200 Iraqi security forces have been involved in 57 operations to find our missing soldier," said U.S. Army spokesman Maj. Shawn Stroud.

A U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said that most of those operations have focused in Shiite neighborhoods.

Al-Sadr loyalists comprise one of the most powerful factions in al-Maliki's government. Seeking to preserve his fragile alliance with the firebrand cleric, al-Maliki has at times obstructed U.S. military efforts in Al Mahdi Army strongholds.

After Taei's abduction, al-Maliki ordered U.S. and Iraqi forces to remove roadblocks around Sadr City that had been aimed at boxing in Taei's kidnappers. In August, as the U.S. military started its plan to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, al-Maliki demanded that U.S. commanders clear with him operations in Shiite neighborhoods.

Nasir Saedi, a Sadr legislator, accused U.S. and Iraqi troops of using the search for the missing U.S. soldier as a pretext to strike his movement.

"They raided with fighter jets, armored vehicles and infantry. Some of them were members of the 'Dirty Iraqi Division' who will be punished."