Gunmen kill 22 Iraqi police, US hits Falluja

10.00pm

FALLUJA - Gunmen captured 21 Iraqi policemen and shot them in cold blood today, a day after attacks on security forces that killed 34 people, police said.

The weekend attacks were a clear riposte to a planned offensive by US forces on the Sunni Muslim rebel strongholds of Falluja and Ramadi as part of the interim government's drive to cripple Iraq's insurgency before elections in January.

A suicide car bomber attacked a US military convoy on the main road to Baghdad airport and a Humvee vehicle was hit, witnesses said.

There was no immediate word on casualties. A US military spokesman said: "We cannot confirm the report at this stage."

Falluja residents said heavy fighting erupted on the eastern edge of the city near the highway leading to Baghdad after intense overnight air strikes and artillery shelling.

They said the Americans were using tanks, heavy machineguns against insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars entrenched in the Hay al-Askari district. One US armoured vehicle could be seen burning on the highway, witnesses said.

There was no immediate comment from the US military on the clashes, but a statement earlier said American aircraft had bombed weapons caches in seven strikes on Saturday.

Police said insurgents attacked a police station in Haditha, 200km northwest of Baghdad, at dawn with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

After a 90-minute battle, in which six policemen were wounded, the attackers took 21 captured policemen to the K-3 oil pumping station area and shot them dead execution-style.

Police said Brigadier Shaher al-Jughaifi, security chief in western Iraq, was also shot dead in an attack on a police station in the nearby town of Haqlaniya.

On Saturday, four car bombs and attacks on police stations killed 34 people, most of them police, in the restive city of Samarra, some 100km north of Baghdad.

The Haditha killings recalled last month's slaughter of 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits ambushed and shot in the head on a lonely road near their training camp northeast of Baghdad.

Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, which previously claimed responsibility for that mass killing, also said it was behind Saturday's violence in Samarra.

"Four lions of the martyrs battalion struck at ... evil in Samarra," the group said of the four car bombings in the city north of Baghdad, in a claim posted on an Islamist web site.

The US military says foreign fighters loyal to Zarqawi are holed up in Falluja along with Iraqi insurgents.

Marines expect to face 1000 to 6000 insurgents and foreign fighters in what they say could be the biggest US military offensive in Iraq since Saddam Hussein fell last year.

US planes and artillery battered the city today as US-led forces awaited orders from interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, now back in Iraq, to storm the rebel stronghold.

Allawi, who has said the door for a peaceful solution in Falluja is closing, was due to hold a news conference at 12.30pm (10.30pm NZT) after returning from a trip to Europe.

Falluja residents said air strikes interspersed with artillery shelling set off huge explosions from about 3am (1pm NZT) onwards. There was no word on casualties.

US attacks have killed dozens of guerrillas, but have failed to scare them away, a senior Marine commander said.

Regiment Commander Colonel Michael Shupp said escape routes out of the city were still open but rebels were not leaving despite days of fierce air and artillery bombardment.

"We have killed lots of them. My unit alone killed 20 in an operation the other night," he told Reuters near Falluja. "There are no signs that they have fled. We expect the full force to be there."

Shupp said a full-scale assault was the only option left and it was too late for negotiations.

In the other attacks claimed by Zarqawi's group, insurgents staged a suicide bombing that wounded 16 US soldiers in the western city of Ramadi and a car bombing that killed an Iraqi and wounded three US soldiers in Baghdad on Saturday.

US and Iraqi forces stormed Samarra a month ago to dislodge rebels in what was then seen as a model for similar actions in Falluja, Ramadi and other rebel cities.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq