US State Department official killed in Iraq

US State Department official Terrence Barnich is among three Americans killed by a roadside bomb in Falluja, US officials have revealed.

Barnich, a deputy director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office in Baghdad, was visiting a construction site in western Iraq on Monday with other US officials and contractors.

An attack the same day killed Barnich along with an American soldier and a civilian working for the US Defense Department.

According to a US military statement, two other civilians working for the US Department of Defense were wounded in Monday's attack near Falluja, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The Americans were driving along a road used exclusively by the American military and reconstruction teams when the attack occurred. Local Iraqi security officials have described as an improvised explosive device the weapon that led to the death.

Falluja, west of Baghdad, is more stable than it was in 2004 when four American contractors were killed. Their bodies were burnt, mutilated and dragged through the streets.

Iraqi leaders say that if the insurgents who later reconciled with the Americans are not made to feel that they have a place in the central government, they will again turn to violence.

Barnich, 56, had been working as deputy director of the State Department office known as the Iraq Transition Assistance Office in Baghdad since January 2007.