BAGHDAD, Iraq - Dozens of insurgents attacked a U.S. convoy with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, sparking a clash that saw U.S. troops kill 26 militants, one of the largest fights since Iraq's Jan. 30 election.

Some 40 rebels hit the military police and artillery units from the Kentucky National Guard late Sunday as the Americans traveled along a road 20 miles southeast of Baghdad that has seen a recent increase in violence, the military said in a detailed account today.

Six soldiers and seven militants were wounded, and one person was arrested.

After the attack, troops recovered six rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 16 rockets, 13 machine guns, 22 assault weapons, more than 2,900 rounds of ammunition and 40 hand grenades from the insurgents.

Also today, in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah, gunmen in two speeding cars opened fire on an Iraq army foot patrol, killing one soldier and wounding another.

The U.S. military reported the death of one of its troops: A U.S. soldier killed a day earlier during action in restive Anbar province, which contains the flashpoint cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

Tod

ay's violence came as Iraq and neighboring Jordan engaged in a diplomatic spat, with a tit-for-tat withdrawal of high-level representatives in a growing dispute over Shiite Muslim claims that Jordan is failing to block terrorists from entering Iraq.

Sunday's diplomatic row erupted even as a Jordanian court sentenced in absentia Iraq's most feared terrorist - a Jordan native - to a 15-year prison term.

As news emerged of the largely symbolic sentencing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose whereabouts are unknown, his al-Qaida in Iraq organization claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed a top anti-corruption official in the northern city of Mosul. Al-Zarqawi already has been sentenced to death twice by Jordan.