BAGHDAD: The US military announced on Friday the deaths of six more soldiers in Iraq, hours after US President George W. Bush predicted a bloody summer lay ahead. Five of the soldiers died on Thursday while another was killed on Tuesday by a roadside bomb in Tikrit, 175 km north of Baghdad, the military said.

President Bush told a news conference in Washington on Thursday he expected heavy fighting in Iraq in the weeks and months ahead.

He predicted insurgents and Al Qaeda would try to influence the US debate on the war by launching major attacks before General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, hands him a progress report in September.

“It could be a bloody -- it could be a very difficult August,” Bush told reporters. A CBS News/New York Times poll said 76 per cent of Americans thought the war was going badly for the United States.

Insurgents defied the weekly Friday curfew in Baghdad to detonate bombs under a bridge linking two Sunni districts in the west of the capital, police said. The bridge over a roadway was still standing but had been badly damaged. No casualties were reported.

In the worst attack on US soldiers on Thursday, two died when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. An Iraqi interpreter was also killed. Another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Nineveh province near Tikrit.—Reuters