BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 8 - One of four Sunni Arabs picked this weekend to join Iraq's new Shiite-controlled cabinet abruptly rejected the job on Sunday, saying he first learned of his selection from a television news report on Saturday night. He added that he felt his selection would further a quota system for Sunnis that would only make sectarian problems worse.
The political setback came as the United States military announced that insurgents had killed eight American servicemen over the weekend. In one ambush, insurgents took over a hospital in Haditha, a haven west of Baghdad for the militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and killed three marines and a sailor. The American military also said it had captured the mastermind behind both the attack on Abu Ghraib prison a month ago and the wave of car bombings that killed 40 Iraqis in greater Baghdad on April 29.
In the capital, the National Assembly approved six new cabinet ministers on Sunday, including the unwilling candidate, Hashim al-Shibli, who had been named human rights minister. But on a day when Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had hoped to complete his cabinet and end the contentious political battles that delayed his government, the rejection was another embarrassment.
One day earlier, Dr. Jaafari had declared at an afternoon news conference that all six nominees had already been approved by President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents. But Mr. Shibli, in an interview, said he did not formally learn that he had been picked until just before the confirmation vote on Sunday, leading him to believe that his selection was more symbolism than substance.
U.S. Marine uses a metal rod to check a pothole for mines during a convoy from Camp Al Asad to Al Qaim, Iraq, on April 23, 2005. photo by Cpl. Brian A. Jaques

The U.S. military reports 75 militants dead in an offensive launched Sunday in western Iraq. The offensive was begun with U.S. air support in a desert area north of the Euphrates River in the province of Anbar. There is no word on civilian casualties, if any.

A report by a ''Chicago Tribune'' journalist embedded with U.S. forces said the offensive "was seeking to uproot a persistent insurgency in an area that American intelligence indicated has become a haven for foreign fighters flowing in from Syria."

More than 1,000 U.S. and coalition troops supported by fighter jets and helicopter gunships attacked villages in and around Al Qaim, near the Syrian border. A statement by the US military said the operation was expected to last several days, and was targeting a smuggling route and hideouts for foreign rebels.

The ''American Forces Press Service'' reports: "Coalition forces also destroyed car bombs, bomb-making material and two buildings that contained large weapons caches to include hand- and rocket-propelled grenades."

The ''New York Times'' reports an estimate of insurgent casualties at over 100.  

Col. Bob Chase, the chief of operations for the Second Marine Division, has said there were "a handful" of marine casualties.  The source also reports Chase saying, "The objective is to totally disrupt the safe havens and rat lines that have allowed them to bring those materials across the border. This had been a very secure area for the insurgents."

In a statement made from an Islamist website that could not be confirmed, the Al-Qaeda militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reportedly said, "The adorers of the cross claim to have killed 75 Muslims at Al-Qaim. Once more, they are lying, because lying is their religion," according to Forbes.