Most senior American general in Iraq escapes death

By JUSTIN HUGGLER in Baghdad

The most senior American general in Iraq has escaped death in a rocket-propelled grenade by seconds.

General John Abizaid, the commander of all US forces in the Middle East, only just managed to get inside a heavily fortified Iraqi army base before an RPG landed outside the walls. The general and his entourage then had to take cover inside the base during the six-minute gun battle that followed.

It was a stark image of the power of the insurgency now sweeping Iraq, and the US inability to suppress it: the most senior American soldier in Iraq hunkered down in a sandbagged base while the bullets fly around him, ten months into the American occupation.

An image as potent as that of Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the occupation, visibly scared before the cameras after a rocket attack on his hotel in Baghdad last October. But if General Abizaid had been killed in the attack, which came in Fallujah, the town which has come to symbolise Iraqi resistance to the occupation, the consequences for the US administration would have been far more serious than the loss of face it suffered yesterday.

General Abizaid is the third senior US official narrowly to escape death in an attack by insurgents in Iraq, after Mr Wolfowitz, and the American occupation administrator, Paul Bremer, whose convoy was attacked last December. General Abizaid, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, is of Lebanese origin and speaks Arabic.

Just as in the previous attacks on Mr Wolfowitz and Mr Bremer, it appeared those behind the attack had received inside information as to where their target would be at a given time. American officials in Iraq sought to play down the possibility, admitting that RPG attacks on US forces and those Iraqis who work with them have become a very common occurrence in Fallujah these days.

But the timing of the attack was too impeccable to be a coincidence, coming just as a convoy carrying General Abizaid, who is not a frequent visitor to Fallujah, pulled into the Iraqi compound. And US defence officials in Washington said they believed it was likely that those behind the attack had been tipped off about General Abizaid's visit.

Moments after the convoy got inside the cinder-block walls, the first RPG landed, followed by two more and a barrage of rifle fire from a nearby mosque. American soldiers returned fire. No one was killed or seriously injured on the American side, including the Iraqis inside the base.

Fallujah has been a hotbed of resistance to the Americans, and after that welcome, General Abizaid and Maj-Gen Swanack decided that a planned walkabout in the city was not such a good idea after all.

The attack capped three days of mayhem in Iraq for the Americans, after consecutive suicide bombings on Tuesday and Wednesday left at least 100 Iraqis dead.

And it came amid more bad news for the Americans in Iraq, as a UN mission appeared to side with Iraqi Shia demands for direct elections -- while the US says they aren't possible before its self-imposed deadline to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government by June 30.

There was a common theme to the targets of this week's attacks: the suicide bombings were directed at those Iraqis working for security forces under the American occupation.

On Tuesday a crowd waiting to apply to join the police in the city of Iskandariya was targeted, and on Wednesday new officer recruits to the army waiting outside a recruitment base in Baghdad.

The other theme of the last three days has been inside information. Just as yesterday's attackers knew the exact moment to strike, this week's suicide bombers knew precisely when their victims would be at their most vulnerable in the open, because it was too crowded for them to get safely inside. Just as those behind earlier attacks knew when to target Mr Bremer's convoy, and the hotel Mr Wolfowitz was staying in inside the heavily guarded "Green Zone" in Baghdad.

The likelihood that inside information was involved has undercut American attempts to blame this week's suicide bombings on Al-Qaeda. Even if foreign militants were behind the attacks, tip-offs from the inside would suggest at least some Iraqi involvement.

As for any tip-off that led to yesterday's attack on Gen Abizaid, it may point to an even more worrying security breach for the Americans, inside their own ranks -- or to one from the Iraqis working with them.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq