Iraq in turmoil on anniversary of Saddam's fall

10.00zm

BAGHDAD - Bloody turmoil reigned in Iraq Friday, the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall, with Sunni and Shi'ite rebels battling US-led forces and holding three Japanese and several other foreign hostages.

Fierce fighting that has convulsed the Sunni cities of Falluja and Ramadi reached the western fringe of Baghdad, where guerrillas killed nine in an attack on a fuel convoy, and said they had seized foreigners travelling in the area.

A Reuters journalist saw two captive foreigners in a mosque in a village in the Abu Ghraib district. One was wounded in the shoulder. Both men were weeping. They said they were Italian.

At the scene of the convoy attack, several vehicles were ablaze and overturned. Nine bodies were in and around the mangled wreckage -- one a dead foreigner lying on the road with a bloody head. An Iraqi beat his corpse.

Teenage fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles lurked on bridges or in derelict lots near the main highway leading west toward the embattled town of Falluja.

Iraq's U.S administrator Paul Bremer said US forces had unilaterally suspended operations in Falluja at midday after a crackdown on guerrillas to allow aid in and what would be unprecedented talks with insurgents.

This week's bloodshed, engulfing the hitherto quiet Shi'ite south as well as the bastions of Sunni insurgency in central Iraq, has shown how far the United States is from securing the country whose dictator it toppled on April 9, 2003.

Iraqis traumatised by 35 years of Baathist rule then hoped Saddam's removal would bring them freedom and a better life. Today they face an uncertain future after 12 months of violence that is sapping a reconstruction drive, hampering oil exports to pay for it and frightening off foreign investors.

In the past week, at least 51 US and allied soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in fighting. Two US soldiers and a civilian truck driver were killed Friday in Iraq, the military said. A British civilian working for a US security firm was also killed, Britain's foreign office said.

Since the start of the US-led war at least 455 US troops have been killed in action in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.

Baghdad streets were quiet Friday as many residents feared more violence.

"America is the big devil," a preacher at Baghdad's Um al-Qura mosque told an angry congregation. Reflecting a growing hostility to outsiders, one worshiper said: "When we get the order for jihad (holy war), no foreigner will be safe in Iraq."

PRESSURE COOKER

Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC radio: "The lid of the pressure cooker has come off."

"There is no doubt that the current situation is very serious and it is the most serious that we have faced," he said.

US-led troops retook the eastern town of Kut two days after Ukrainian soldiers withdrew after clashes with Shi'ite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who launched an uprising across southern Iraq this week.

Bremer announced the Falluja cease-fire after five days of street fighting. The director of the main hospital said 450 Iraqis had been killed and 1,000 wounded in the city this week.

Marines launched "Operation Iron Resolve" in Falluja after last week's killing and mutilation of four US security guards. The ferocity of the crackdown has angered Iraqi politicians working with Bremer's administration.

"We are seeing the liquidation of a whole city," Governing Council member Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar told Al Jazeera television, saying he might resign to protest the treatment of Falluja.

A Shi'ite in the 25-member Council, Abdul Karim al-Mohammadawi, has already suspended his membership.

Clashes erupted after Friday prayers in the mixed Sunni- Shi'ite town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, as insurgents fought US troops and attacked buildings, witnesses said.

Shooting also broke out after a demonstration in the northern city of Mosul, witnesses said. They said at least three Iraqis were killed in fighting around Mosul city hall and a dawn-to-dusk curfew had been imposed.

Clashes in the shrine city of Kerbala between Shi'ite fighters and Polish and Bulgarian troops killed 15 Iraqis.

Shi'ite militiamen still control the center of the shrine city of Najaf, where Sadr is thought to be holed up. The violence erupted as Shi'ite pilgrims thronged Kerbala for Arbain, a religious occasion that climaxes this weekend.

Sunnis and Shi'ites prayed together in the southern city of Basra, in one of many shows of solidarity seen across Iraq.

A major international oil conference due to take place in the city later this month.

NO JUBILATION THIS YEAR

In Baghdad, new razor wire barriers blocked streets around Firdaws Square where US Marines and Iraqis dragged down Saddam's statue a year ago. Loudspeaker messages warned the public to stay away. The measures appeared designed to foil possible anniversary protests against the US-led occupation.

Posters of Sadr fluttered on a green sculpture symbolising a new Iraq erected where Saddam's statue once stood. A US soldier later climbed a ladder to pull down the Sadr pictures in an eerie echo of last year's iconic images.

For some US allies, the surge in fighting and kidnapping will fuel debate on the wisdom of keeping their troops in Iraq.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, already under fire at home for sending troops to Iraq, said he had no plans to withdraw them despite the kidnapping of the Japanese civilians.

A previously unknown Iraqi group released a video of the three hostages Thursday and vowed to "burn them alive" if Japanese troops did not leave Iraq within three days.

- REUTERS



Herald Feature: Iraq