Five years ago Thursday, President George W. Bush made a dramatic landing in a Navy jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California to announce that, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

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The White House said Wednesday that the "Mission Accomplished" banner displayed behind the president during his carefully managed celebration and media event was a mistake.

The president is "well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner."

She said she expected the news media to play up the anniversary of the event "as they do every year."

Bush, in October 2003, disavowed any connection with the "Mission Accomplished" message. He said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later said the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor.

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on," he said at the time.

Perino sought to focus on what she called "a very tough month in Iraq." The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad Wednesday pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September.

The violence continued Thursday when a car bomb aimed at a U.S. patrol in Baghdad killed at least nine Iraqi civilians and wounded 26, police said.

In related news, the U.S. military said Thursday it launched an attack against an al-Qaida target in Somalia, and an Islamic insurgent group said the head of the terror network in the African country was killed in an overnight American airstrike.

The spokesman for the Islamic al-Shabab militia, Sheik Muqtar Robow, said the strike killed Aden Hashi Ayro, another commander and seven others at his house in the central Somali town of Dusamareeb, about 300 miles north of Mogadishu. Six more people were wounded, two of whom later died, said resident Abdullahi Nor.

U.S. Central Command spokesman Bob Prucha said the U.S. military attacked al-Qaida militants but would not confirm whether it was an airstrike and would not say specifically who the attack targeted.

The attack came as an Iraqi delegation traveled to Iran with what it said was evidence to prove that the Islamic republic is arming and training of Shiite militias in Iraq.

Five Shiite politicians left Wednesday with "evidence, confessions and pictures" indicating that Iran is supplying weapons and training fighters who are locked in a violent standoff with U.S. and Iraqi troops, the government official said.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Wednesday that the mission to Iran does not represent a ramping up of military options against the country.