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BAGHDAD - Police found the decapitated and bound bodies of nine policemen in an al Qaeda stronghold in Iraq today, as US commanders blamed the militant group for chlorine gas bombs that poisoned hundreds in the same province.
Anbar, a Sunni Arab province west of Baghdad, has long been among the most troublesome areas of Iraq for the US military, which is sending additional combat troops there to fight insurgents and al Qaeda militants engaged in an escalating power struggle with local Sunni tribesmen.
Iraqi police Colonel Tareq al-Theybani said the bodies, which bore signs of torture, were discovered in an abandoned post office in the town of Juwayba, near the city of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province.
A US military spokesman, meanwhile, said al Qaeda was behind the chlorine gas car bomb attacks earlier this week which killed at least two and made hundreds ill in villages near the city of Falluja. But, he said, tight Iraqi security measures had prevented a higher number of casualties.
Saturday's apparently co-ordinated attacks by two suicide bombers driving dump trucks carrying chlorine and another smaller car bomb that also released chlorine came weeks after two similar attacks sparked fears of a new campaign to use unconventional weapons in Iraq.
Rear Adm Mark Fox said one of the attackers detonated his explosives when he was unable to get past an Iraqi checkpoint, killing only himself, and avoiding more casualties.
"Steps and measures are being taken to protect people from car bombs," Fox told reporters at a news conference.
US commanders have warned that while the number of murders and executions have fallen sharply in Baghdad since a US-backed security crackdown was launched in mid-February, car bombs by suspected Sunni Arab insurgents blamed for trying to incite sectarian civil war remain a serious concern.
Today, a car bomb at a crowded market in a mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood of northern Baghdad killed six people and wounded 30, police said. Five bodies were also found in different parts of Baghdad on Sunday, a police source said.
Shi'ite militias the Pentagon said in a report last year had become the greatest threat to security in Iraq have been lying low since the Baghdad plan was launched, but Sunni militants have continued their attacks.
As thousands of US and Iraqi troops are deployed in Baghdad in a security plan that is seen as the last chance to avert all-out civil war, American soldiers are also focusing their efforts on finding car bomb factories in mostly Sunni areas of the Baghdad beltway.
In Washington, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said it was too early to evaluate whether the latest US strategy was working but "so far, so good."
American generals say it will probably be summer before the impact of additional US troops sent to Iraq can be fully assessed, and have warned that the troop surge could have a "squirting effect" where al Qaeda and insurgents would operate from elsewhere, Gates said.
"I think that the way I would characterize it is so far, so good. It's very early," Gates said in an interview on CBS' Face the Nation programme.
US President George W Bush has ordered an additional 26,000 troops to Iraq. Only two of five additional combat brigades expected to be deployed in Iraq under Bush's "surge" have arrived, Fox said.
"It is going to take months rather than weeks to see the results we want to see," he said.
The US military announced today two more US combat deaths after five were killed in two roadside bombs announced on Saturday. Another US soldier died on Saturday in a non combat incident, the US military said.
- REUTERS
