A reporter for the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper wrote that dozens of Iraqis were killed along with the five Marines in 14 hours of fighting Saturday in western Iraq near the Syrian border. There was no official confirmation of the deaths.

Marine intelligence told the reporter traveling with the Marines that nearly 300 Iraqi fighters launched an offensive, setting off a roadside bomb to lure Marines from their base and then firing 24 mortar rounds.

"It doesn't feel real. It doesn't look real," Lance Corporal Dustin Myshrall told the newspaper. At least nine Marines were wounded and more than 20 Iraqi fighters were captured and taken to the main Marine base near the western town of al-Qaim.

Since March 31, at least 99 US soldiers have died in action in Iraq -- more than were killed during last year's three-week war that toppled Saddam Hussein -- amid battles against a Sunni insurgency and a new Shia revolt.

The US military in Baghdad said one soldier had been killed in al-Anbar province, which stretches from Baghdad to the Syrian border, but did not say where or how the soldier died.

Near the southern town of Diwaniya Saturday, the US military said three soldiers were killed when a convoy was ambushed at 7pm (1500 GMT). Witnesses said at least seven Iraqis were killed and six wounded in clashes between US-led forces and Shia militiamen in the town Saturday evening.

Sunday, angry residents pointed to blackened shops and walls bullet-pocked from the firefight that followed. Burned-out cars and two charred military vehicles littered the streets.

In other attacks, the US military said a soldier died after a bomb blast hit a convoy in Baghdad Saturday. Another soldier was killed and two were wounded by an anti-tank mine near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit the previous day.