BAGHDAD - The loss of eight US soldiers on Memorial Day in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, making May the deadliest month so far this year for American forces, underscores the intensity of fighting in this mixed region on the Iranian border.
Six US soldiers were killed Monday in a single attack on their patrol, victims of a sophisticated Al-Qaeda-led insurgency capable of defeating well-protected US vehicles.
Two others died when their helicopter crashed, bringing total US losses in Iraq this month to 111 -- a fifth of them in Diyala.
Monday's incident was the second time in May that six soldiers were killed in a single attack, usually indicating that large armoured vehicle was destroyed.
The lush, agricultural province once known for its orange groves and date palms was once home to nearly equal numbers of Sunnis and Shiites as well as a smattering of Kurds.
Together with neighbouring Baghdad, it has fallen into ruthless sectarian strife in the last two years.
A vicious Sunni insurgency has preyed on Shiite villages in the countryside and city neighbourhoods, forcing thousands to flee for Baghdad and the south.
Shiite militias, with the occasional connivance of government security forces, have carried out own revenge attacks on Sunnis.
Understrength US forces in the region seemed helpless to stem the tide of bloodletting until the arrival of fresh troops with a new mission in late 2006.
In March, Colonel David Sutherland told reporters that renewed US efforts had cut the sectarian fighting by 70 percent, but at the price of a significant rise in attacks on US troops.
Troops from February's so-called "surge" into Anbar and Baghdad provinces were diverted to Diyala as the situation become more perilous, including units armed with the army's prized 17-ton Stryker armoured vehicles.
Soon, however, the insurgents were destroying even these with massive roadside bombs. On May 6, an attack on a Stryker killed six soldiers and a Russian photographer.
Major General Benjamin Mixon, the commander of northern Iraq, theorised that insurgents fleeing operations in Baghdad were heading to Diyala.
"I do not have enough soldiers in Diyala province to keep that security situation moving," he said earlier this month.
But all is not totally bleak for the province, according to US commanders on the ground, who say that the same alliance between US troops and local tribes that has helped calm the lawless province of Anbar may work in the east.
"Tribal sheikhs completely understand that Al-Qaeda is a cancer of this country," Lieutenant Colonel Morris Goins of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, told reporters Tuesday from the provincial seat of Baquba.
"They are willing to come to the table, willing to come to provide information, we have more and more sources every day."
Tips from local residents led US and Iraqi forces to an Al-Qaeda prison camp Sunday where they freed 41 Iraqi showing signs of torture.
Goins, however, would not identify which of Diyala's 100 tribes are working with him for reasons of "operational security," suggesting that Al-Qaeda's powers of intimidation remain strong.
Captain Paul Carlock, whose company raided the camp, said that many of the prisoners were given the option of joining Al-Qaeda in its attacks and that a great deal of indoctrination material was found.
"Most of them said the reason they were detained by Al-Qaeda was because they broke some of Al-Qaeda's very strict rules," he said. "In one case it was a 13-year-old boy kidnapped for smoking a cigarette."
"Between the local elected leaders, the coalition forces and the tribal council, things have gotten better, not just the security situation but with food and water," Carlock said.

05/29/2007 15:26 GMT