Thirteen Iraqis and a US Marine died in separate firefights between insurgents and US troops, while politicians readied for talks with a UN team of experts on upcoming Iraqi elections. The Marine died and several others were wounded in the conflictive Iraqi town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, a military spokeswoman said.

In Baghdad, members of Iraq's US-picked interim Iraqi Governing Council readied for talks with the United Nations team. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan agreed on March 18 to return his envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and the team to Iraq to help prepare for election of a new government to take power in three months. Kurdish governing council member Mahmud Othman said, however, "the technical team will arrive (Saturday) and the other team with Brahimi will come after they attend the Arab summit," in Tunisia on Monday and Tuesday. Their return was not welcomed by all Iraqis.

In Fallujah, a Muslim bastion west of Baghdad, five persons died after masked insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and mortars confronted US Marines, hospital sources said, "Four people have been killed. They are all males and include a two-year-old child, and seven people, also males, were wounded," doctor Ahmed Shaker Kadduri is reported to have said. An Iraqi ABC News cameraman was killed Friday by a bullet to the forehead when US troops fired in the direction of journalists during clashes in Fallujah, doctors and witnesses said.

The deaths came a day after the Committee to Protect Journalists asked US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to investigate the deaths of journalists in Iraq. Twenty-three media workers have died in the year since the US-led war began. A land mine blast in a picnic area on the outskirts of the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk killed another two Iraqis wounded 14 others, police said.

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Meanwhile in Washington, supporters of President George W. Bush went on the offensive against former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, who said that Bush administration failed to take the terrorist threat as seriously as it should have before September 11, 2001 -- and then pursued an unnecessary Iraq war which "undermined" any war against the al-Qaeda terror network. Several Bush staffers, including Vice President Richard Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and White House spokesman Scott McClellan, attacked Clarke's credibility. Republican lawmakers even said they would declassify Clarke's congressional testimony from July 2002, which they said belies his claims.