Violence surges in Iraq
Monday, 29 September , 2003, 19:33
Baghdad: Violence raged in Iraq Monday with mounting Iraqi civilian and US troop casualties amid growing signs that Washington was ill-prepared to manage the occupation of the country in the wake of its military victory over Saddam Hussein.
And as another US soldier was killed in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, an Iraqi official working on the technicalities of drafting the country's new constitution escaped an assassination attempt that killed his bodyguard.
The United States and Britain meanwhile continued to protest that their invasion of Iraq was fully justified, with more US troops called for duty there, despite mounting public opposition to their continued presence amid the security turmoil in the war-ravaged country.
A day after four US soldiers were wounded in homemade bomb attacks north and south of the capital, the US military said one American soldier was killed and one wounded in an attack Monday on a convoy near Fallujah, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.
A military spokeswoman said the convoy was attacked about 9:15 am (0515 GMT) by an "improvised explosive device" in the town of Habbaniyah, near where the Americans have a large base.
The latest death brought to 85 the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since May 1, when Washington declared major combat over.
A US military spokesman also said six US soldiers were wounded in Sunday's bomb attack on a convoy in the hotspot town, where anti-US sentiment runs high.
And a protracted firefight Monday outside Khaldiyah, 30 kilometres further west, lasted more than four hours, with American helicopters firing six rockets and spraying machine-gun fire, an AFP correspondent said.
Witnesses said several US soldiers were wounded, and some appeared to have been killed, before the four US tanks, half a dozen humvee vehicles and a troop transport withdrew along a back road under heavy fire.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi civilian death toll continued to rise as US forces west of the northern city of Kirkuk killed a 10-year-old child and wounded a 25-year-old man when they opened fire on hundreds of demonstrators who pelted them with stones, hospital director Abdullah Jiburi said.
The US army did not immediately confirm the report.
An AFP correspondent on the scene said the casualties occured when around 500 protestors carrying portraits of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein took to the streets of Hawija and began pelting US soldiers with stones
An Iraqi police officer also said unidentified assailants fired four mortar rounds, without causing any damage, at a US position in the centre of Kirkuk, an Iraqi police station and an army rehabilitation centre.
And in an attempt on his life, Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, working on how to draft a new constitution for Iraq, came under gunfire Sunday, which left his bodyguard dead. It was the second attack on a political figure in nine days. Sagheer, a prominent Shiite, was unhurt after being fired upon in his car near his home in a Baghdad suburb.
Female Shiite Governing Council member Akila al-Hashimi died Thursday from gunshot wounds, five days after being ambushed near her Baghdad home.
In a significant rebuke of the US intelligence community, US lawmakers said the White House relied on information that was circumstantial, fragmentary and filled with uncertainties to justify the Iraq war, US media reported.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, after four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by President George W.
Bush's administration to make its case for war, found significant deficiencies in the intelligence community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, the Washington Post reported.
The CIA blasted the criticism, but the latest edition of the US magazine Newsweek said Monday that while the Pentagon was focused on winning the war, the occupation was a second thought.
The weekly painted a picture of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refusing to allow 16 out of 20 Pentagon experts to go to Baghdad because they were "Arab apologists," had positive opinions of the United Nations or other views not acceptable to the neo-conservatives running the US government.
While Pentagon officials derided the United Nations, the State Department was getting information from UN officials on the conditions of the infrastructure, especially the power grid, whose dilapidation took the Pentagon by surprise, Newsweek said.
"We have until Ramadan -- which begins October 27 -- to turn it around," British Prime Minister Tony Blair's emissary to the region, John Sawyers, told US officials. "After that it will be too late."
US Secretary of State Colin Powell meanwhile told ABC television that the United States will have a new resolution ready for the UN Security Council within two days, but is not counting on getting large numbers of foreign troops to help its forces in Iraq.
Tens of thousands demonstrated against the war in major capitals around the world at the weekend, capped by a protest by more than 3,000 in San Francisco who chanted, "Bring the soldiers home!" and "Money for schools, not for occupation!"
But Blair told BBC television he had no regrets at all about taking Britain into the war, despite increasing public dissatisfaction over the conflict.
Jordan's King Abdullah II meanwhile said Monday his country would train some 30,000 Iraqi police and troops, with the first batch of 3,000 expected in the kingdom shortly.
And in Brussels, incoming NATO secretary general, Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Monday that a NATO deployment in Iraq is "not yet thinkable."
Monday, 29 September , 2003, 19:33
Baghdad: Violence raged in Iraq Monday with mounting Iraqi civilian and US troop casualties amid growing signs that Washington was ill-prepared to manage the occupation of the country in the wake of its military victory over Saddam Hussein.
And as another US soldier was killed in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, an Iraqi official working on the technicalities of drafting the country's new constitution escaped an assassination attempt that killed his bodyguard.
The United States and Britain meanwhile continued to protest that their invasion of Iraq was fully justified, with more US troops called for duty there, despite mounting public opposition to their continued presence amid the security turmoil in the war-ravaged country.
A day after four US soldiers were wounded in homemade bomb attacks north and south of the capital, the US military said one American soldier was killed and one wounded in an attack Monday on a convoy near Fallujah, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.
A military spokeswoman said the convoy was attacked about 9:15 am (0515 GMT) by an "improvised explosive device" in the town of Habbaniyah, near where the Americans have a large base.
The latest death brought to 85 the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since May 1, when Washington declared major combat over.
A US military spokesman also said six US soldiers were wounded in Sunday's bomb attack on a convoy in the hotspot town, where anti-US sentiment runs high.
And a protracted firefight Monday outside Khaldiyah, 30 kilometres further west, lasted more than four hours, with American helicopters firing six rockets and spraying machine-gun fire, an AFP correspondent said.
Witnesses said several US soldiers were wounded, and some appeared to have been killed, before the four US tanks, half a dozen humvee vehicles and a troop transport withdrew along a back road under heavy fire.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi civilian death toll continued to rise as US forces west of the northern city of Kirkuk killed a 10-year-old child and wounded a 25-year-old man when they opened fire on hundreds of demonstrators who pelted them with stones, hospital director Abdullah Jiburi said.
The US army did not immediately confirm the report.
An AFP correspondent on the scene said the casualties occured when around 500 protestors carrying portraits of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein took to the streets of Hawija and began pelting US soldiers with stones
An Iraqi police officer also said unidentified assailants fired four mortar rounds, without causing any damage, at a US position in the centre of Kirkuk, an Iraqi police station and an army rehabilitation centre.
And in an attempt on his life, Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, working on how to draft a new constitution for Iraq, came under gunfire Sunday, which left his bodyguard dead. It was the second attack on a political figure in nine days. Sagheer, a prominent Shiite, was unhurt after being fired upon in his car near his home in a Baghdad suburb.
Female Shiite Governing Council member Akila al-Hashimi died Thursday from gunshot wounds, five days after being ambushed near her Baghdad home.
In a significant rebuke of the US intelligence community, US lawmakers said the White House relied on information that was circumstantial, fragmentary and filled with uncertainties to justify the Iraq war, US media reported.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, after four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by President George W.
Bush's administration to make its case for war, found significant deficiencies in the intelligence community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, the Washington Post reported.
The CIA blasted the criticism, but the latest edition of the US magazine Newsweek said Monday that while the Pentagon was focused on winning the war, the occupation was a second thought.
The weekly painted a picture of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refusing to allow 16 out of 20 Pentagon experts to go to Baghdad because they were "Arab apologists," had positive opinions of the United Nations or other views not acceptable to the neo-conservatives running the US government.
While Pentagon officials derided the United Nations, the State Department was getting information from UN officials on the conditions of the infrastructure, especially the power grid, whose dilapidation took the Pentagon by surprise, Newsweek said.
"We have until Ramadan -- which begins October 27 -- to turn it around," British Prime Minister Tony Blair's emissary to the region, John Sawyers, told US officials. "After that it will be too late."
US Secretary of State Colin Powell meanwhile told ABC television that the United States will have a new resolution ready for the UN Security Council within two days, but is not counting on getting large numbers of foreign troops to help its forces in Iraq.
Tens of thousands demonstrated against the war in major capitals around the world at the weekend, capped by a protest by more than 3,000 in San Francisco who chanted, "Bring the soldiers home!" and "Money for schools, not for occupation!"
But Blair told BBC television he had no regrets at all about taking Britain into the war, despite increasing public dissatisfaction over the conflict.
Jordan's King Abdullah II meanwhile said Monday his country would train some 30,000 Iraqi police and troops, with the first batch of 3,000 expected in the kingdom shortly.
And in Brussels, incoming NATO secretary general, Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Monday that a NATO deployment in Iraq is "not yet thinkable."
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