WAR UPDATE : Combined news services

Suspected insurgents killed.
U.S. troops killed five suspected insurgents, captured 30 and recovered explosives during a raid in Anbar province west of Baghdad, a day after police uncovered 17 decomposing corpses beneath two school yards. The U.S. military also reported that a suspected insurgent was killed and eight captured in two raids north of Baghdad and that some were believed linked to al-Qaida in Iraq and to a militant cell that has used chlorine in car bombings.Iraqi troops take over. Iraqi troops took charge of security in the southern province of Maysan, a region that borders Iran and the fourth province to come under full Iraqi security control since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

No agreement on funding bill.

President George W. Bush and Democratic congressional leaders meeting at the White House failed to reconcile key differences over a disputed war-funding bill facing a Bush veto because it would require withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Democrats said later that they would send the legislation to Bush soon and hoped he would sign. The White House said that would not happen.Oil shipments drop. Iraq exported 325,000 barrels of crude oil a day to the U.S. market in February, down 39 percent from the month before, based on data released this week. The Energy Department said that was Iraq's smallest volume of crude sent to the United States since September 2003, just a few months after American forces removed Saddam Hussein from power. The department did not explain why Iraq's oil shipments fell so sharply.