Two U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in separate incidents near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad. One of the soldiers died and two were wounded when Iraqi resistance fighters engaged their patrol with small-arms fire and the other soldier was killed when a convoy was struck by a roadside bomb near the town. In Baghdad, a U.S. patrol killed three Iraqis, including an 11 year-old boy, at a gun market in the capital after apparently mistaking test-firing by customers as an attack. In Saddam Hussein’s home-town of Tikrit, U.S. forces backed by tanks and mortars assaulted dozens of positions in the city, carrying out more than 38 attacks in the town. A total of six Iraqis have been killed and 99 arrested in a series of sweeps across the country in the past 24 hours.

In northern Iraq, an oil pipeline was set on fire as a new U.S.-led force was deployed to defend the pipeline. And The New York Times is reporting that a U.S. general is preparing to pull troops out of the center of the guerrilla hotbed town of Ramadi within the next month or two and instead will have Iraqis oversee security. The general said “We will become the backup and the checkers if they aren’t doing something right.” The Times notes that most of the Iraqi police slated to take over haven’t had significant training.