Nine civilians killed in new Iraq violence

7.45am


BAGHDAD - Nine civilians were killed in fresh violence in Iraq on Thursday when guerrillas mounted attacks two days before the first anniversary of the start of the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein.

A British military spokesman in Basra said four Iraqis were killed in an explosion outside the southern city's Mirbad Hotel. A child was one of at least two people wounded, witnesses said.

Three employees of a US-funded television station were shot dead at Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, and two Iraqis, including a child, were killed in fighting between guerrillas and US troops in another restive town, Falluja.

Guerrillas have targeted Iraqis seen as cooperating with US-led occupying forces, who blame Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic militants for attacks.

The Basra attack occurred only hours after a suicide car bomber killed seven people, including a British engineer, at a hotel in Baghdad on Wednesday night. US officials blamed that attack on Muslim militants, possibly linked to al Qaeda.

Occupying forces are on alert for an increase in violence in the run-up to Saturday's anniversary of the invasion on March 20 last year that toppled Saddam.

US VOWS TO FINISH IRAQ MISSION

President Bush's administration stepped up vows that guerrilla attacks would not deflect it from its goal of bringing about a democracy in Iraq.

"Terrorists in Iraq seek to break the will of the Iraqi people. They believe that if they spill enough Iraqi blood they can halt Iraq's progress to democracy. They are wrong," Iraq's US Governor Paul Bremer said in a statement.

Basra, a stronghold of Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims long oppressed under Saddam, has had fewer attacks than Baghdad and Sunni areas like Falluja and Baquba near the capital.

The hotel had been regularly used for news briefings by the British military and by the civilian administration of Iraq's second city.

The British military spokesman said it was not clear whether a car bomb or explosives planted in the street caused the blast.

Basra residents said an angry crowd had beaten to death a man suspected of being behind the attack. The British military said it was aware of the reports but could not confirm them.

Eight US soldiers were wounded in a mortar attack in Falluja on Thursday, the US army said. Witnesses said a child was one of two Iraqis killed in a battle that followed.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US army in Iraq, told a news conference the battle erupted as American soldiers were meeting local administrators in municipal offices in the flashpoint city.

Troops opened fire after several mortar rounds struck and a US warplane and helicopters circled overhead. Locals carried away the body of one man caught in the crossfire. Nearby, a dead child lay on the ground, blood draining from his neck.

Witnesses said a helicopter had come down near Falluja, but the US army said it had no reports of any incident.

The US army said the attack that wrecked Baghdad's Mount Lebanon hotel bore the marks of the Ansar al-Islam militant group or of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused by Washington of working for al Qaeda to sow chaos in Iraq.

A senior US officer ended hours of confusion in which the death toll was given as high as 27 by saying seven civilians had been killed in the blast. Officials in London named the dead Briton as telecommunications engineer Scott Mounce. He was 29.

At first light, smoke still rose from a smouldering nearby house, its front wall ripped off in the explosion. On the upper storey, a picture still hung on the wall and a mattress and carpet lay on the floor of what used to be someone's bedroom.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq