Seven servicemen from the 2nd Marines Expeditionary Force perished on Monday, six of them under rebel fire near Haditha, 250 kilometers west of Bagdad and the seventh fell in a car bomb explosion close to the locality of Hit, 170 kilometers west of the capital, the US Central Command reported Tuesday.

In another attack, about four people were killed Tuesday and another 24 wounded in Baghdad´s Tahrir Square when a car bomber blew himself up close to a US military convoy, doctors at Ibn-al-Nafis hospital said.

The US military, that have lost nearly 2.000 soldiers in Iraq, have provided no information yet on casualties in Tuesday´s attack.

According to witnesses, one US Humvee was set ablaze and 14 other vehicles were damaged by the blast, which occurred at around 13:00 local time Tuesday.

Meanwhile, an undetermined number of US soldiers and civilians were also reported wounded when a US tank veered off the road after an explosive device targeting it blew up in the al-Adl neighborhood in west Baghdad.

Also early Tuesday, Iraqi police said five people were shot dead when attackers opened fire as they were leaving a city hospital to view the body of a Sunni cleric killed on Monday night.

Late on Monday, Shaikh Akil al-Mahadidi, a cleric from al-Muhajirin mosque, and his brother were shot dead in the west of Baghdad.

An Iraqi police colonel was killed in a drive-by shooting, and two employees of the Finance Ministry were shot dead on their way to work in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.

Colonel Mizher Hamad Yussef was leaving home for work when he was shot by a machine gun from a passing car in east Baghdad.

In another incident, a civilian was killed and five wounded, four of them police officers, when a car bomber attacked a police patrol in the center of Baquba, 37 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.

In the meantime, Sheikh Humam Hammudi, the head of a committee drawing up a new constitution for Iraq, has said a new charter can be completed by the August 15 deadline.

According to Hammudi, the draft would be sent to parliament for a debate and vote in two weeks. The committee had considered asking for an extension of up to six months.