Iraq's beleaguered armed forces were ordered on high alert on Friday ahead of the verdict in the trial of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, while a US spy chief made an unannounced visit to Baghdad.
As Iraq stepped up security, the US military said that eight more of its troops had been killed around the country and that the bodies of 23 murdered Iraqis had been found in Baghdad over the previous 24 hours.
The Iraqi High Tribunal trying Saddam for crimes against humanity will deliver its verdict on Sunday, and Iraq has cancelled all military leave to thwart any outbreak of violence before or after the ruling.
"All military personnel are on alert. Leave has been cancelled and we are on alert for any possible emergency. Those on leave should report to their units," said defence ministry spokesman Major General Ibrahim Shaker.
Saddam and seven of his former regime officials are accused of ordering the deaths of 148 Shia in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, where the deposed president escaped an assassination attempt in 1982.
The tribunal is expected to deliver a death sentence on the former Iraqi military strongman, a judgement that could further escalate violence in the war-ravaged country.
The US military on Friday said eight troops were killed in Iraq since Wednesday, of which seven died on Thursday.
Four US marines died from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in Al Anbar Province of western Iraq, military statement.
Three other soldiers were killed on Thursday in a Baghdad bomb attack and one soldier died due to non-combat causes on Wednesday.
The deaths bring to 2,825 the number of US troops to have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.
US military spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Josslyn Aberle said 23 corpses had been found in Baghdad over the past 24 hours, the latest apparent victims of a savage campaign of sectarian cleansing by rival death squads.
Meanwhile, US National Intelligence Director John Negroponte met Maliki and "renewed the support of the US administration and President George W. Bush for the Iraqi government," the Iraqi leader's office said.
They also "discussed the need for the Iraqi armed forces to have enough numbers and equipment to take charge of the security portfolio," it said.
Maliki has been pushing the United States to grant him more control over his own armed forces and to pay for more equipment and recruits, promising that he could be ready to take charge of security within six months.
US commanders, however, believe the process will take more than a year.
Negroponte's trip came three days after US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley visited Baghdad, and six days after Bush talked with Maliki through a video link from Washington.
Last week Maliki bridled at pressure to accept the US timetable for disarming Iraq's powerful illegal militias, declaring: "I am a friend of the United States, not America's man in Iraq."
The Iraqi leader has also ordered US forces hunting for a captured comrade to abandon a cordon they had set up around the flash-point Baghdad district of Sadar City, a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia.
These apparent disagreements between Washington and Maliki's coalition government have played into the hands of critics of Bush's war plan.
The UN refugee agency warned donors on Friday that it is "distressed" at the lack of an international response to a growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq caused by alarming levels of violence, a spokesman said on Friday.
"UNHCR officials who just returned from the region warned that we are now facing an even larger humanitarian crisis than we had initially prepared for in 2002 to 2003," said Ron Redmond for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
At least 1.6 million Iraqis are displaced internally, including 425,000 who fled their homes this year largely due to sectarian violence, the UNHCR said.
Against such a backdrop, Bush's Republican party is facing a tough poll challenge from its Democratic opposition in Tuesday's vote.
The Democrats need to win 15 seats to capture the 435-seat House of Representatives and six seats to take the 100-seat Senate.
If they do so, Bush faces the prospect of finishing the last two years of his mandate as a lame duck president, hobbled by congressional inquiries into the conduct of the war and legislative obstruction.
A New York TimesCBS poll released on Thursday showed only 29 percent of US voters approve of the way Bush is managing the war.
Also on Friday, US forces killed 13 suspected al Qaeda militants near Mahmudiyah, a short distance south of Baghdad, the military said, while unidentified gunmen killed three Iraqis.
US marines also arrested eight Iraqis, including three bodyguards of the mayor of the former rebel town of Fallujah, after coming under attack from a mosque and government offices on Friday, the military said.