U.S. Iraq toll hits 4000-- and attacks on Green Zone "surge"

It's not on AP yet but MSNBC reports tonight: "Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb blast in southern Baghdad late Sunday, raising the death toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon. The grim milestone was reached less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and coincided with a spate of violence across Iraq on Sunday that left at least 61 people dead. The attacks included rockets and mortars fired at Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone and a suicide car bomb detonated at an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul."

And The New York Times observes in passing (as my wife discovered) in a story on the rising violence elsewhere in Iraq: "Two children in Baquba, a 10 year old and an 8 year old, also died on Sunday. They were playing on a street, as children do, when a homemade bomb hidden under some garbage detonated, killing them instantly. When authorities reached the scene, the security official said, all that they found were pieces of the children’s bodies."