Correction Appended: A photograph on page 7 of yesterday's Daily should not have said MSA Campus Improvement Commission chair Stuart Wagner was speaking with the assembly about a proposal to create a liaison to the Ann Arbor City Council. Wagner was not in the MSA chambers when the proposal was being discussed.

BAGHDAD (AP) - The war in Iraq passed a sobering milepost yesterday when U.S. officials reported 12 more Americans were killed - eight of them members of the armed forces, raising to more than 1,900 the number of U.S. service members who have died in the country since the invasion.

A Diplomatic Security agent attached to the U.S. State Department and three private American security guards were killed when their convoy was hit by a suicide car bomber Monday in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said. The four were attached to the U.S. Embassy's regional office in Mosul.

The announcements came as British and Iraqi officials issued stinging charges and countercharges about the storming of a Basra jail to free two British soldiers who had been arrested by Basra police. During the raid, British forces learned that Shiite Muslim militiamen and police had just moved the two men to a nearby house. The British then stormed that house and rescued the men.

British Defense Minister John Reid said his forces in the southern city were "absolutely right" to act. But a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the operation was "very unfortunate."

Britain's Foreign Office later released a statement it said was from al-Jaafari's office, insisting there is no crisis in relations between the two countries.

"In response to recent events in Basra, the Iraqi government wants to clarify that there is no 'crisis' - as some media have claimed - between it and the British government," said the statement from al-Jaafari's office, according to the Foreign Office. "Both governments are in close contact, and an inquiry will be conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior into the incident."

The latest American deaths, which raised the overall toll to 1,907, included a soldier from the 18th Military Police Brigade killed in a roadside bombing 75 miles north of the capital yesterday, the military said.

Four soldiers attached to the Marines died Monday in two roadside bombings near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. They were attached to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

Three soldiers died Friday but their deaths weren't announced until yesterday: Sgt. Matthew L. Deckard, 29, of Elizabethtown, Ky., killed when a bomb went off near his tank during patrol operations; and Army Spc. David H. Ford IV, 20, Ironton, Ohio, and Army 1st Sgt. Alan N. Gifford, 39, Tallahassee, Fla. killed when an explosive detonated near their tank in Baghdad.

Before the eight military deaths were announced, a Pentagon count said 1,479 U.S. service members had died in hostile action in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003. The toll includes five military civilians and excludes American service members who died from other causes.

Names of the victims were not released in Baghdad, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a statement issued in New York, identified the Diplomatic Security officer as Stephen Eric Sullivan. His age and address were not given.

"Steve's death is a tragic loss for all of us at the Department of State. Our thoughts and prayers are with Steve's family. We grieve with them in their loss and stand with them at this difficult time," the Rice statement said.

A new poll showed dwindling support among Americans for President Bush's handling of Iraq. Two-thirds in an AP-Ipsos survey said the United States was spending too much in Iraq, and just as many felt the money was not being spent wisely. The poll had a 3-percentage-point margin of error.

While about 135,000 U.S. troops operate throughout Iraq, the 8,500 British forces are headquartered in the Basra region, in the country's far south.

A day after British armored vehicles stormed the jail in Basra to free two commandos, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a Shiite who serves as Iraq's national security adviser, said the operation was "a violation of Iraqi sovereignty."

British forces used armor to bash their way into the jail compound late Monday after a day of turmoil that erupted with the arrest of the two commandos. At first Basra police said the men shot and killed a policeman, but yesterday the al-Jaafari spokesman, Haydar al-Abadi, said the men - who were wearing civilian clothes - were grabbed for behaving suspiciously and collecting information.