Casualties

He was the person people always wanted to be around. A standout football player and homecoming king, Francis L. Toner IV had a smile for everyone at Westlake High School in Westlake Village. "The kid was pure goodness," said Christina Harrison, who taught him U.S. government in his senior year.

A suicide truck bomber attacked a police headquarters Friday in the tense northern city of Mosul, killing five U.S. soldiers in the deadliest strike against American forces in Iraq in 13 months. The bomber got around several concrete barriers and detonated his truck loaded with explosives at the entrance to the local headquarters of Iraq's national police. A U.S. military convoy passing at the time provided the bomber with a "target of opportunity," said U.S. Army spokesman Maj. Derrick Cheng.

Three Americans and two other foreign troops were killed Friday in an attack in eastern Afghanistan, officials said. Insurgents attacked Afghan and coalition forces with grenade launchers and guns, NATO forces said in a statement. The troops called in air support, and the militants withdrew. They are being pursued, the military said. Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, confirmed that three of the slain troops were Americans.

First, one of Manuel Martinez's children fell ill. Then others in his family -- 12 people living under a single small roof in the state of Zacatecas -- became sick. Martinez, 42, was the last to catch the disease, and the only one in his family to die. Daniel Lucio Fiscal, 35, a robust father of a small child, taught music in the elementary and high schools of San Luis Potosi. He took his family to a resort for Easter weekend, and then the headache and fever started. He died April 25.

Iraqi soldiers killed a Sunni Arab fighter from a U.S.-allied local militia unit Tuesday and arrested his brother, Iraqi police said. Basim Mohammed was shot during a raid in Abu Ghraib, a predominantly Sunni district on the western outskirts of Baghdad, a police source in the district said. The official, who declined to be named, did not say what charges Mohammed or his brother may have been facing.