Surreal night vision footage of joint US - Iraqi operations in Baghdad.

May 28 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush, paying tribute to fallen troops on Memorial Day, said soldiers who fight in Afghanistan and Iraq today are protecting the freedoms that have been enjoyed in the U.S. for generations.

``Now this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes, men and women who gave their lives in places such as Kabul and Kandahar, Baghdad and Ramadi,'' Bush said at a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Today is the sixth straight U.S. Memorial Day with the nation at war. As Americans celebrated the holiday in honor of those who have died at war, violence continued in Iraq. A suicide bomber stuck a commercial district in Baghdad, killing at least 21 people and damaging a shrine where both Sunnis and Shiites worship, according to the Associated Press.

Since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, 3,433 U.S. personnel have died and more than 25,500 have been wounded, Pentagon figures show. In Afghanistan, 387 U.S. troops have been killed and 1,250 wounded since October 2001, when the U.S. opened the war on terrorism.