American forces fought off a botched insurgent ambush on Sunday, killing at least 17 attackers, as US and Iraqi commanders sought a new joint strategy to end the violence in Iraq.
After a week of strained relations between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government and Washington, the allies have agreed to boost their co-operation and speed the handover of Iraq's embattled security forces to local control.
They are faced with two linked challenges: how to end a vicious sectarian war between rival Sunni and Shia factions, and how to defeat a rebellion by nationalist guerrillas against the US-backed regime.
Maliki and US President George W. Bush agreed on Saturday to set up a panel of Iraq's security ministers, the US military commander in Iraq and the US ambassador to better coordinate and adapt security strategy.
Meanwhile, the insurgents suffered a battlefield defeat on Sunday, according to a statement from US military command.
Fighting erupted near the northern town of Balad when rebels armed with assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades twice ambushed a US convoy en route to a raid targeting "three suspected terrorists".
In the first ambush, soldiers called in an air strike, which left four of the attackers dead, and as they fought off the second assault a combination or air and ground fire killed 13 more, the military said.
"The terrorists were planning to ambush the coalition ground force. The plan did not succeed. No coalition forces were injured during the attack," it added.
During the fighting, US soldiers spotted secondary explosions, suggesting that roadside bombs had been laid for them but had detonated prematurely.
"Despite the terrorists' ambush attempts, coalition forces successfully continued their operation and detained three suspected terrorists," the US military statement said.
Balad lies 80 kilometres (45 miles) north of Baghdad in a fertile area of the upper Tigris valley that has recently been at the centre of a brutal sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni factions.
Violence also continued in Baghdad -- where two police officers were shot dead in an ambush by unidentified gunmen -- and in the killing fields north of the capital in the restive province of Diyala.
Gunman opened fire on a bus carrying pilgrims back from Mecca as it neared the town of Khalis, wounding four travellers and killing their imam, Sheikh Ghazi al-Dulaimi from Baquba, police said.
In Baquba itself, a gang broke into the home of an 80-year-old woman, gunned her down, and kidnapped her sons, according to medical sources.
Two Iraqi army soldiers were also killed, this time by a roadside bomb.
Thousands of US troops were scouring Baghdad in search of a kidnapped soldier, an American of Iraqi descent who slipped out of the fortified Green Zone a week ago and went to visit relatives in the capital.
A relative of the missing GI told AFP that he was kidnapped by masked gunmen from a family home after coming to see his secret Iraqi wife.
"The family were against the marriage, it was thought she had bad morals," he said, speaking on condition the family not be identified.
The relative said some in the family suspected the wife might have been to blame for the abduction, either by deliberately tipping off the kidnappers or by "talking too much" about the supposedly secret liaison.
US forces fear the captive may be held in Sadr City, a sprawling Shia slum and a bastion of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, and have set up check points around the area.
More than 2,000 residents protested the cordon operation Sunday, chanting anti-American slogans, at a demonstration organised by Sadr's office.
More than three-and-a-half years after US forces invaded Iraq and overthrew the dictator Saddam Hussein, the country is locked in a bitter sectarian conflict that claims more than 100 lives per day.
US troop casualties are also mounting, with October's death toll already standing at 98, the highest monthly level since January 2005.
A week ahead of key US congressional elections Bush and his British ally Prime Minister Tony Blair are facing increasing domestic pressure to find a way to bring the 142,000 US and 7,200 British troops home.
Thousands of anti-war demonstrators marched against Bush in California on Saturday and the next day a former head of the British armed forces described Britain's attempt to fight on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan as "cuckoo".