Five US soldiers killed in Iraq

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BAGHDAD, June 15 (AP): Five U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, the U.S. military announced Friday, a day after extremists fired shells into Baghdad's Green Zone during a visit by the State Department's No. 2 official.
Three of the soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded near their vehicle Thursday during operations in Kirkuk province in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said in a statement. Another soldier was wounded in the blast.
A fourth soldier was killed by small arms fire the same day in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, another statement said. And another soldier died Wednesday in a non-combat related incident, which the military said it was investigating.
A curfew remained in place in the capital two days after suspected al-Qaida bombers blew the minarets off a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra and stoked fears of a bloody sectarian backlash.
Violence appeared mostly in check Friday, but police said unknown bombers leveled a Sunni shrine near Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.