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Three American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, the unit which killed the two sons of Saddam Hussein on Tuesday, died yesterday in an attack on their convoy.
It came under grenade and small arms fire as it drove towards Qayarah, a few miles south of Mosul, where the division had attacked the house where the Hussein brothers were holed up.
On Wednesday, one soldier from the division was killed and seven were wounded when two vehicles hit a mine on the outskirts of Mosul, and in a separate ambush, a soldier from the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment was killed west of Baghdad.
The latest attack came as a group claiming to be linked to the Fedayeen Saddam vowed to avenge the deaths of Saddam's sons in a videotape aired on the al-Arabiya television network.
"We pledge to you, Iraqi people, that we will continue in the jihad against the infidels. The killing of Uday and Qusay will be avenged," said a masked man.
The Fedayeen Saddam was a paramilitary organisation loyal to the former president. The tape showed masked men holding automatic rifles in a room plastered with photographs of the former president and his sons.
No single group has said it is responsible for the mounting attacks, but US field commanders say they range from former members of the Iraqi army and its Special Republican Guard to Islamists from Iraq and other Muslim countries.
The killings of five US soldiers in two days show that the deaths of the Hussein brothers have brought no let-up in the danger facing the roughly 150,000 US troops stationed here. The speaker on the tape aired by Dubai-based al-Arabiya television said: "The killing of Uday and Qusay will not decrease the attacks against the Americans but rather increase them."
However, Adnan Pachachi, leading a delegation from the new Iraqi governing council for talks in London, said: "There is a feeling [the deaths] will hasten the end of the acts of violence."
The past week has seen 11 American deaths, or a quarter of the 44 who have died since President George Bush declared "major combat operations" were over on May 1.
In Baghdad, two Iraqis were killed when US troops opened fire on a car that ignored instructions to stop, witnesses
said.
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