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US soldier killed in southern Iraq

A US military statement says an American soldier has been killed in southern Iraq as the new US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has arrived in Baghdad.

The soldier was killed on Sunday, bringing to three the number of American soldiers killed this month.

In June, 14 US soldiers were killed, making it the most fatal month in three years for the US forces in Iraq, AFP reported.

Panetta, who took office on July 1, travelled to Iraq after visiting Afghanistan. According to US defense officials, he is expected to push Iraqi leaders to make a quick decision on whether they want American forces to remain in the country beyond the planned pullout deadline at the end of this year.

Out of some 170,000 US troops that were deployed in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, about 46,000 remain in the country now, reports say.

The soldiers are scheduled to leave by the end of December 2011, unless a deal on the extension of US troop presence is reached between Baghdad and Washington.

Over 4,470 US troops have been slain in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion of the country, which has also claimed the lives of one million Iraqis according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business.

Bombings and other forms of violence escalated in Iraq soon after the US-led invasion.

Washington said the military action was carried out to discover the weapons of mass destruction allegedly possessed by the executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime. However, no WMDs were ever found in Iraq.

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