Hits Baghdad:

Iraqi security forces will dig trenches around Baghdad and set up checkpoints along all roads leading into the city to reduce some of the violence plaguing the capital, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

To help halt that bloodshed, more U.S. troops have been shifted to Baghdad from the insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, a senior U.S. commander said.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Marine was killed Friday in Anbar province, and an American soldier was killed Thursday evening by a roadside bomb northwest of Baghdad, the military said. Five American soldiers died Thursday, making it an especially bloody day for U.S. forces.

A U.S. soldier is missing from a suicide bombing 30 miles west of Baghdad that killed two of those soldiers, U.S. military officials said.

The soldier “has been reported as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown,” the military said, without elaborating.

Neither U.S. military officials in Iraq nor in Washington would say whether they believed the soldier had been abducted or whether he may have been killed in the attack, and his remains had not been recovered.

An Iraqi civilian was killed and five others were wounded when a gunman on top of an abandoned building opened fire in a Sunni Arab neighborhood in central Baghdad, said police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali.

But look at the good side. Iraq has now progressed to the dark ages and are employing moats as a line of defense. Way to go Bush!