A suicide bomber targeting poor labourers killed 70 people in Baghdad on Tuesday, a day when US President George W. Bush was talking to his military chiefs in Iraq to help him draft a new US strategy.
A White House official said Bush, who faces popular pressure for a quick withdrawal of US troops, was likely to delay unveiling a new strategy until early in January, instead of late this year as originally planned.
The top US operational commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, said before briefing Bush in a video teleconference that US forces should stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces were ready to assume security control.
Bush's briefing by his generals was part of a high-profile focus this week on how to change strategy in Iraq. He was due to hold talks with Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi, later in the day.
He consulted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top diplomatic officials on Monday and is due to visit the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Three US airmen were also killed in action in western Iraq on Monday and two other soldiers died in separate incidents, the military said on Tuesday.
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