US Troops Tighten Security in Baghdad After Attacks
Sun Jun 29,10:01 AM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Another explosion in Baghdad targeted a U.S. convoy on Sunday as Washington's top official in Iraq (news - web sites) said coalition forces would suffer further casualties until Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s supporters were killed or captured.
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Soldiers imposed tighter measures around military posts, U.S.-led administration offices and ministry buildings in the city of five million, witnesses said. They also stepped up search operations for weapons and wanted Saddam loyalists.
In the latest of a series of hit-and-run attacks, an Iraqi civilian died and two U.S. military police soldiers were wounded in Baghdad when an explosion targeted a U.S. convoy.
At least 22 Americans have been killed by hostile fire since President Bush (news - web sites) declared major combat over on May 1. Two others were found dead in unclear circumstances on Saturday.
Saturday's deaths took to more than 200 the number of Americans who have died, both in combat or non-combat incidents, since U.S. forces began the war in Iraq on March 21.
In Majjar, about 380 km (240 miles) south of Baghdad, there was no sign on Sunday of British forces in the town where gunmen killed six British soldiers last week.
Britain's Defense Ministry in London said a force of 500 troops returned to Majjar on Saturday where its commanders met a delegation of Shi'ite Muslim clerics and local dignitaries. The British told the people they were there to help them reestablish their community, not to punish them, a ministry spokesman said.
Townspeople told Reuters on Sunday the force, which drove into the town in about 40 military vehicles, had stayed only for three hours before pulling out.
The British had informed the leaders of the town that they had no plans to stay, residents said.
They said the forces checked the police station where most of the soldiers died last Tuesday. At least four Iraqis were also killed in the shooting.
"The situation is stable here...We don't need the British," Mohammad al-Shumari, a dignitary, said.
U.S. "WILL CATCH SADDAM"
U.S. and British troops seeking to impose law and order in postwar Iraq have come under attack repeatedly in recent weeks.
Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, told BBC Television chances were "very high" Saddam would be caught: "We will catch him. I think it is important that we either capture or kill him."
Uncertainty about Saddam's fate was allowing his supporters to cow ordinary Iraqis by asserting that he and they would return to power, the veteran U.S. diplomat said.
"There are people who out here, particularly remnants of the old regime...still fighting us," he said. "We will capture and if necessary kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country.
"It is unfortunately the case, we will continue to take casualties. But there is no strategic threat to the coalition here," he said.
Iraqis say a lack of some form of Iraqi authority is also fueling anger against Americans.
Bremer forecast that a political council of Iraqis would be set up within three or four weeks -- toward the end of his previously announced target date range of mid-July.
A U.S. military spokesman said the two wounded Americans from the convoy were evacuated to a military hospital. There were no details on exactly how the Iraqi civilian died.
Hours earlier on Saturday night, attackers lobbed two grenades near U.S. soldiers guarding the Iraqi National Museum, the soldiers said. There were no casualties.
On a different front, a Kurdish official said Kurds must be allowed to reclaim their homes in the oil-rich town of Kirkuk for peace to prevail in northern Iraq.
"The government of Iraq had a policy of Arabisation, ethnic cleansing, that sought to change the demographic character of Kirkuk," Burham Saleh told Reuters in Suleimaniya. "This policy must be reversed for Iraq to be peaceful."
Tens of thousands of Kurds and Turkmens were displaced from the city and replaced by Arabs during the rule of Saddam and his Baath Party. (Additional reporting Huda Saleh Majeed, editing by Lisa Vaughan)
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US still confident of catching Saddam, mounts new sweep in Iraq
Sun Jun 29,11:46 AM ET Add Top Stories - AFP to My Yahoo!
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The United States remained confident of bringing former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) to book, as the US military announced the launch of a new operation to crush his militant supporters.
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"Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division and Task Force Ironhorse conducted more than 20 simultaneous raids involving attack aviation, armor and infantry forces," the US military said in a statement Sunday.
The Desert Sidewinder operation, as US forces have dubbed it, follows Operation Desert Scorpion launched on June 15 to eliminate what the US military describes as "destabilising influences" targeting its rebuilding efforts.
More than 60 suspects were detained in the raids along with weapons and military documents believed to relate to the former regime, the statement said.
"The raids target former Baath Party loyalists, terrorists suspected of perpetrating attacks against US forces and former Iraqi military leaders, and to locate weapons and ammunition caches," the statement added.
"Operation Sidewinder is the third in a series of operations ... to root out elements attempting to undermine coalition efforts to restore basic infrastructure and stability in the region," it said.
Spokeswoman Sergeant Amy Abbott described Sidewinder as "a very important operation to rid us of Baath party loyalists and terrorists," while declining to say where exactly the operation was being carried out.
But she said that US forces considered the central area of paramilitary activity in central Iraq (news - web sites) to be along the Tigris River from Baghdad to Samarra, around 125 kilometres (75 miles) north of the capital.
Samarra lies between the capital and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, a Sunni Muslim belt where support for his toppled regime was strongest.
No US casualties were reported in the raids, Abbott added, declining to say whether any Iraqis had been killed or wounded.
The chances of capturing Saddam, toppled in the US-led invasion launched in March but unsighted since the beginning of April, remain very good, Paul Bremer, the top US administrator in Iraq, said Sunday.
"I think the chances of catching Saddam are very high. We will catch him," Bremer told the BBC. "I think it is important that we do that, that we capture or kill him."
Bremer admitted that continued failure to account for Saddam's whereabouts was hampering the coalition's efforts to restore order in Iraq.
"There's no doubt that the fact that we had not been able to show his face allows the remnants of that Baathist regime to go around in the bazaars and in villages and in towns saying that Saddam will come back and we will come back, so don't cooperate with the coalition," he said.
An Iraqi civilian was killed and two US soldiers wounded early Sunday in an apparent attack using an improvised explosive device in Baghdad, a US military spokesman told AFP.
He did not say if the Iraqi had been an attacker or a bystander or if he had been killed by the blast or by US gunfire.
US troops in Fallujah came under rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack again overnight, for the third time in four days, even though there were no reports of casualties.
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Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, has been tense since US troops shot dead at least 16 people at a demonstration in late April.
In the main southern city of Basra, meanwhile, hundreds of former Iraqi soldiers angrily blocked the headquarters of British forces demanding the payment of back wages.
They placed barbed wire and large rocks at the main entrance to Saddam's old al-Barazhiya palace and hurled stones, preventing two British ambulances from leaving the compound and prompting an armoured vehicle to take up position at the entrance.
Finally one of the soldiers' representatives was brought inside the palace and a deal was struck to hand out payments Tuesday, Lieutenant Commander Clive Woodman told AFP.
The discovery of the remains of two US soldiers believed abducted and killed by Fedayeen militia still loyal to the ousted Baathist regime was followed on Sunday by news that their missing Humvee light armoured vehicle had been recovered northwest of Baghdad.
As attacks on coalition forces become an almost daily occurrence, more than 200 US troops have now died since the war to oust Saddam began.
A senior military official said Iraq was still being treated as a war zone, despite US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) declaring major combat operations over almost two months ago on May 1.
"The war is not over. What we do have is Saddam Fedayeen and Baathist leadership out there that is attempting to disrupt the coalition's efforts," he said, while describing them as working in "fragmented, small cells."
"There's a group out there with a common agenda -- that is to disrupt coalition efforts and kill coalition soldiers," the official said, adding, "These casualties that we are encountering are not causing us to falter in any way."
Despite the violence, the coalition has pushed on with its efforts to build a democratic Iraq. Bremer held talks Sunday in the northern town of Salahedin with Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, focussing on coalition plans for an interim government.
"The meeting reached some positive results on the plan to create constitutional and political councils," Barzani told reporters.
Bremer envisions installing in July an interim 25-30 member Iraqi political council that would appoint ministers in waiting.
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