BAGHDAD, Iraq - A roadside bomb killed five U.S. Marines and gunfire killed an American sailor in a western Iraqi town, the U.S. military said today.

Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber slammed into a truck today that was carrying policemen along the main road connecting Baghdad with its airport, killing at least eight officers and injuring at least 25, police and hospital officials said.

The U.S. deaths came amid an upsurge in violence appeared to be aimed at derailing stepped-up efforts by Shiite politicians to bring the disaffected Sunni Arab minority into the political process.

The Marines died Wednesday after their vehicle was attacked near Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, the military said. Officials in Ramadi had reported a roadside bomb blast in the pre-dawn hours.

A sailor attached to the Marines' unit, the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, was also killed Wednesday in Ramadi by gunfire, the military said.

The six U.S. deaths raised Wednesday's toll from insurgent attacks to 58 killed, making it the deadliest day of violence in more than a month.

Meanwhile, a judge and his bodyguard were killed this morning in an eastern Mosul neighborhood where many residents support the now-banned Baath Party of toppled President Saddam Hussein, officials said.

Six masked gunmen in two cars blocked the road and sprayed the judge's car with machine-gun fire. Mosul is 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Police found the bodies of 11 people in two towns in the so-called Triangle of Death today, an official said. The corpses of five family members were discovered at a farm in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, said Capt. Muthana Khalid, a police spokesman.

A group of armed men wearing police uniforms broke into the family's house Wednesday and pretended to arrest them and later killed them, Khalid said. There were signs of torture on the bodies, he said.

The remains of six other people were found in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, Khalid said. Gunmen used the bodies as a trap to ambush arriving officers and engaged police in a firefight, he said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Iraqi legislators, meanwhile, seemed close to agreement on a demand by Sunni Arabs for more participation in the effort to draft a constitution.

A Shiite-dominated parliamentary committee drafting Iraq's new constitution offered a compromise to the country's Sunni Arab minority in an effort to break a deadlock over demands they have a bigger say in drawing up the charter.

The offer suggested that 13 additional Sunni Arabs join the committee in a parallel body. The head of a major Sunni religious organization and a spokesman for the community's largest political party rejected committee chairman Hummam Hammoudi's offer.

The Sunni Arab community has said it wants 25 more people to join their two legislators already on the committee. Representatives from the 55-member committee and the Sunni Arab community were scheduled to meet today to discuss the proposal.