BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ten US troops were killed in Iraq on Wednesday, a major blow on the same day a high-level panel in Washington recommended gradually shifting US forces from a combat to a training role.

Friends and relatives take part in the funeral procession carrying the coffin and a portrait of Malik Hussein, in Najaf, south of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006. Malik Hussein, an Iraqi soldier, was killed by sniper fire on Baghdad's airport road on the previous day. [AP]

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group released recommendations for changing course in the country, saying President Bush's policy in Iraq "is not working." The Iraqi government said the US report did "not come as a surprise," and it agreed that Iraq must take the lead in its own security.

"The situation is grave, very grave in fact, and cannot be tolerated," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said on the pan-Arab satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya. "Absolute dependence on foreign troops is not possible. The focus must be on boosting the Iraqi security forces."

The US military said in a statement that 10 Americans had died in four separate incidents but gave no further details, pending notification of relatives. In addition to the 10 casualties, the US command said two US soldiers were killed Sunday in Baghdad and a Navy sailor were killed in Anbar province on Monday.

The latest deaths raised to at least 30 the number of US troops who have died this month. At least 69 troops were killed in November and 105 soldiers were killed in October - the highest amount for a month since January 2005.

At least 2,918 service members have been killed since the war started in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In other violence Wednesday, two mortar rounds landed and exploded in a secondhand goods market in a mixed Shiite-Sunni area in central Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens, said police officers Ali Mutab and Mohammed Khayoun, who provided the casualty totals.

About 25 minutes later, a suicide bomber on a bus in Sadr City detonated explosives hidden in his clothing, killing two people and wounding 15, police 1st Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.

It appeared to be the first attack by suspected Sunni Arab insurgents on the large slum since Nov. 23, when a bombing and mortar attack killed 215 people in the deadliest single attack since the Iraq war began more than three years ago.

A total of at least 75 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Wednesday, including 48 whose bullet-riddled bodies were found in different parts of the capital.

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