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Another group of Iraqi prisoners has been freed under a national reconciliation plan Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced earlier this month.

About 450 detainees were released Tuesday, from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad and other detention centers across the country.

Several hundred detainees were freed earlier.

Mr. Maliki has promised to release 2,500 prisoners by the end of the month. Officials say those being freed are not involved in violent crimes, or had been detained by mistake.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military says one American Marine and a soldier were killed in separate attacks west and south of Baghdad Tuesday. Another U.S. soldier was killed in Anbar on Monday.

Separately, Iraq's High Tribunal has set August 21 as the date to start a second trial of Saddam Hussein and several of his former top officials on charges of genocide for killing tens of thousands of Kurds in the 1980's Anfal campaign.

The campaign to crush a Kurdish uprising also included the gassing in Halabja in 1988 that killed 5,000 people.

Saddam and seven co-defendants are currently on trial for the murder of 148 Shi'ites from the village of Dujail following an assassination attempt against the former Iraqi dictator in 1982.