Insurgents today killed 19 Iraqi soldiers and wounded four others in a co-ordinated ambush northeast of Baghdad just two days after the deadliest attack against United States Marines in four months.

A roadside bomb killed 10 Marines and wounded 11 others on a foot patrol near Fallujah, the US military said. It was the deadliest attack against American troops in four months.

The US Marine who mysteriously vanished in Iraq and reappeared in Lebanon nearly three weeks later is doing better in a US military hospital in Germany and will probably return home within a few days.

THE worst US “friendly fire” incident of the Iraq war has been blamed on a Marine captain who called fighter jets to strike suspected Iraqi positions last March, unaware that dozens of Marines were fighting in the area, defence officials said yesterday.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ordered about 62,000 more US troops to head for the Gulf in coming days, doubling the size of the force in the region.