Iraq declares martial law, 23 police killed

8.25am - By FADEL AL-BADRANI

FALLUJA, Iraq - Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi declared martial law on Sunday and said a US-led military offensive against the rebel-held city of Falluja could not be delayed much longer.

Insurgents have intensified violence in Iraq to show their muscle before the US offensive on Falluja begins and police said gunmen killed 23 policemen in three attacks on Sunday.

Allawi was doing all he could to find a peaceful solution, his spokesman Thair al-Naqib said. "He still hopes that it may be possible to avoid a major military confrontation in Falluja ... He is, however, not optimistic," Naqib said.

The Americans say they are only awaiting the word from Allawi, who returned from Europe on Saturday, to attack.

The interim government earlier declared a state of emergency in all areas of Iraq, except the region of Kurdistan, for a period of 60 days.

The state of emergency, equivalent to martial law, was intended to ensure security before January polls, Naqib said.

The government gave itself emergency powers soon after replacing Iraq's US-led administration on June 28, but it has not yet used them despite a raging insurgency.

Moments after the announcement, a car bomb exploded near the house of Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi in central Baghdad's Karrada district, killing two people.

"I am fine. I was far away from the place where this explosion happened," Abdul Mahdi told Reuters by telephone.

Hospital staff said they had received the bodies of a policeman and a bodyguard. The US military said an American soldier was wounded in gunfire that erupted after the blast.

Abdul Mahdi is a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shi'ite party.

The bloodiest attack on police was in Haditha, 200km northwest of Baghdad, where rebels stormed a police station at dawn, wounding six policemen.

Assailants took 21 captured policemen to an oil pumping station area and shot them execution-style.

Brigadier Shaher al-Jughaifi, security chief in western Iraq, died in an attack on a police post in nearby Haqlaniya.

Insurgents also kept up a wave of attacks on US-led forces and Iraqis working for them.

An American soldier was killed and another wounded when their convoy was attacked west of Baghdad, the military said.

It said a separate car bomb attack killed one US soldier and wounded four in western Baghdad.

A suicide bomber drove into a US convoy on the Baghdad airport road in an attack for which a militant group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility.

US troops sealed off the scene of the attack, but a US military spokesman said he had no information about it.

The bodies of three Iraqi translators for US forces were found in the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, police said.

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

The US military says 1000 to 6000 fighters, including some loyal to Zarqawi, are holed up in Falluja.

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

US troops enforced a round-the-clock curfew in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a day after bombings and attacks on police stations killed 34 people, mostly police. Allawi's office said 49 people were also wounded. All the casualties were men.

Local officials said they were asking the Americans to lift the curfew at least briefly so that people could go to mosques and shops. They wanted US troops to reopen roads around the sealed-off city to let stranded people get home.

The Samarra violence erupted barely a month after US and Iraqi forces stormed the city to dislodge rebels in what was then seen as a model for assaults in Falluja and Ramadi.

The Haditha killings recalled last month's slaughter of 49 unarmed army recruits on a lonely road northeast of Baghdad.

Zarqawi's group, which claimed responsibility for that killing, also said it was behind Saturday's Samarra attacks.

Two Turkish drivers were burned to death when rebels hit their fuel tankers with grenades near Samarra, police said.

Syria, which Washington has accused of failing to stop militants entering Iraq, has reached a border cooperation deal with Baghdad, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Terry Friel and Lin Noueihed in Baghdad, Michael Georgy near Falluja, Sabah al-Bazee in Samarra, and Dubai bureau)

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq