US Military Strength and Technology Brought to Bear a Little too Late for Missing Soldiers

BAGHDAD, May 13 — About 4,000 American ground troops supported by surveillance aircraft, attack helicopters and spy satellites swept towns and farmland south of Baghdad on Sunday, searching for three American soldiers who disappeared on Saturday after their patrol was ambushed, military officials said.


The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, asserted that it had captured the three missing Americans and claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed four other American soldiers and an Iraqi Army soldier. The group offered no proof for its claim.


The intensive search coincided with two deadly car bombings in Baghdad and northern Iraq that killed at least 55 people, wounded 155 and further underscored the challenges facing the American and Iraqi security forces, which have been unable to thwart such attacks by the Sunni Arab-led insurgency despite the infusion of new American troops.


The ambush of the Americans occurred near Mahmudiya, a predominantly Sunni Arab farming town south of the capital that has been a battleground between Sunni Arab-insurgents, Shiite militias and Iraqi and American security forces.


Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, said Sunday that three of the American soldiers killed in the attack had been identified, but that “we’re still going through the process of identifying” the fourth, suggesting that the soldier had been seriously disfigured. American officials said the soldiers were attacked while traveling in two vehicles, which burst into flames.


The military command has not yet released the names of the victims they have already identified.


American military officials offered few details on Sunday about the search but said they were sparing no resources.


“Everybody is fully engaged, the commanders are intimately focused on this,” Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top American military spokesman, said at a news conference with reporters from the Iraqi media, according to The Associated Press. He said the searchers were using “every asset we have, from national assets to tactical assets.”


Troops surrounded the town of Yusufiya, near Mahmudiya along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, conducted house-by-house searches and checked all cars entering and leaving town, The Associated Press reported.


The Islamic State of Iraq posted its claims of responsibility on jihadist Web sites on Sunday. “Clashes between your brothers in the Islamic State of Iraq and a Crusaders’ patrol in Mahmudiya, southern Baghdad province, has led to the killing and arresting of several of them,” the message said.


If history is any measure, the chances of the Americans surviving capture would be slim. The organization has claimed responsibility for numerous killings of prisoners.