The Iraq war is in the spotlight at the Venice film festival for the second day running on Saturday with a Canadian film showing the toll the conflict takes on returning US soldiers.
The head of the British Army during the invasion of Iraq has blasted the United States for its handling of the aftermath, a newspaper reported Saturday.
As of Friday, Aug. 31, 2007, at least 3,737 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 3,061 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Representatives from feuding Sunni and Shiite groups met Friday at a secret location in Finland to discuss ways of ending the bloodshed in Iraq, officials said.
President George W. Bush, facing Democratic pressure to begin pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, urged Congress on Friday to wait for a crucial assessment of his strategy before making any judgments about the war.
President Bush huddled with top military leaders about the Iraq war Friday, and Pentagon officials defended efforts to rid the Iraqi national police of sectarian bias and corruption, even as an independent review found the force too tainted to continue.
A US film laying bare the ugly reality of the Iraq war seared the big screen at the Venice film festival on Friday, with director Brian De Palma saying he hoped it would help end America's military occupation.
Iraq said on Friday that it hopes other armed groups will follow Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's decision to freeze his militia as Sunni Arabs expressed optimism the ban would reduce attacks on them.
America's troop buildup in Iraq has sharply reduced sectarian killings and roadside bombings and lowered al-Qaida's influence, the top U.S. general in the country said in an interview published Friday.
A U.S. military plane carrying three U.S. senators and one member of the House of Representatives came under fire Thursday night as it left Baghdad, Iraq, but it was not hit and flew safely to Amman, Jordan.