BAGHDAD, 7 September 2004 — Seven US Marines were killed in a bomb attack near Fallujah yesterday in one of the worst days of US military casualties since the war in Iraq was declared over in May last year. And in an embarrassing climbdown, the interim government in Baghdad said a man arrested Sunday was not Saddam Hussein’s trusted lieutenant Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri.

The car bomb attack, 15 km north of Fallujah, also killed three Iraqi policemen and destroyed two Humvees, witnesses said. Medical teams in helicopters swept into the dusty, barren site to ferry away the injured, and troops sealed off the surrounding area.

The force of the bomb sent the vehicle’s engine “a good distance” from the site, a military official said on condition of anonymity. Four Iraqis were wounded by fire from US troops near the site of the bombing, said Ahmed Bassem of the Fallujah General Hospital. The US military was unable to immediately confirm the report.

With yesterday’s deaths and those of two US soldiers in a mortar barrage outside Baghdad a day earlier, 985 US service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department.

US forces have not patrolled inside Fallujah since April, when US Marines ended a three-week siege. The city has since fallen into the hands of insurgents who have used it as a base to manufacture car bombs and launch attacks on US and Iraqi government forces.

Yesterday’s deaths were the largest number of Americans killed in combat in a single day since May 2, when nine US troops died in separate mortar attacks and roadside bombings in Baghdad, Ramadi and Kirkuk.

In Baghdad, three US soldiers were wounded in a roadside bombing yesterday. The explosion was one of three separate attacks on coalition forces between 11 a.m. and noon.

A day after several Iraqi officials reported the capture of Ibrahim, who was sixth on a US list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam’s regime and had a $10 million price on his head, the government had to make an embarrassing admission that he had not been caught after all. “The person that has been arrested, after appropriate medical tests, was not Al-Douri but somebody related to him, who is also wanted by the state,” the Interior Ministry said.

On Sunday, the Defense Ministry and two Iraqi ministers said Ibrahim had been captured near the town of Tikrit, Saddam’s former powerbase, only to be contradicted by other officials.

The two ministers gave a detailed account of how Ibrahim had been captured after a battle in which 150 of his followers were killed or captured when they tried to thwart his arrest.

But the regional National Guard commander in Tikrit, and US forces in the area, said they knew nothing about any such battle and had no information on Ibrahim’s capture.

Even the claim of the DNA test was disputed. An Iraqi Health Ministry official denied that any detainee underwent DNA tests.

“We are not aware of any DNA tests and if such tests were being carried out, we would have been informed because they have to be performed by the Health Ministry,” the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

There was no immediate explanation from the government on how so many top officials had been wrong on the reported capture. It was the second time the government has had to make a major retraction since it took over formal sovereignty in June.

Last month the government said police had entered Najaf’s Imam Ali Mosque without a shot being fired to recapture it from Shiite militiamen holed up inside. The report turned out to be false and the uprising in Najaf did not end until the following week, when Iraq’s most respected Shiite cleric brokered a peace deal.

Meanwhile, an Internet statement purportedly from a group holding two French hostages demanded a $5 million ransom for them and gave a 48-hour deadline to come up with the cash. The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately verified. France had earlier said it was hopeful the men were alive and well and could be released soon.

Journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were seized Aug. 20 by a militant group called the Islamic Army in Iraq, which initially demanded Paris scrap a law banning Muslim head scarves in state schools. France refused that demand. Yesterday’s statement also called for a truce with Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and a promise of no military and commercial dealings with Iraq — demands which appeared to be directed at France.

The group said it would accept just one of its demands being met, but issued a warning against any attempt to attack it: “We warn you not to bombard us as you did... on the day when we intended to deliver them (the hostages) to you.” It did not spell out what would happen if the deadline expired.

Five other foreign hostages held by other groups were reported to have been freed yesterday. Jordan’s foreign minister said four kidnapped drivers — three from Jordan and one from Sudan — were freed, and Ankara said a Turkish driver had also been released by a separate group after his firm pledged to stop working in Iraq.

— Additional input from agencies