AP confirms death toll

The deaths brought the toll of U.S. troops killed across Iraq this week to 42. The fighting also has killed more than 460 Iraqis _ including more than 280 in Fallujah, a hospital official said. At least 643 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

Iraq’s top U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, announced a unilateral pause in the 5-day-old Fallujah operation to allow Sunni clerics and American military leaders an opportunity to talk with anti-coalition insurgents.

It also was designed to allow in humanitarian aid and let beleaguered residents bury their dead. Cars filled with women, children and the elderly streamed out of the city, a bastion of anti-U.S. Sunni guerrillas 35 miles west of Baghdad.