US death toll in Iraq surpasses 1991 gulf war

BAGHDAD - The number of US soldiers killed in combat in Iraq surpassed the toll for the 1991 Gulf War on Friday when a servicemen was killed in a blast in the restive town of Falluja.

His death was the 148th in combat since the war was launched nearly four months ago. A US military spokeswoman said the soldier's Humvee drove over an explosive device in the town 50km west of Baghdad. There were 147 American fatalities in the 1991 war.

The soldier was the latest victim in what US officials say is a "guerrilla-style" war waged by supporters of Saddam Hussein who was toppled on April 9 in the US-led war.

The attack came a day after an audiotape said to be made by Saddam, was broadcast on Arabic television, urging Iraqis to launch a jihad, or holy struggle, to oust occupying troops.

A top Pentagon architect of the war was in Baghdad on Friday as a panel of experts warned that Washington had three months to create law and order or risk descent into chaos.

In the southern town of Najaf, a powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric said a new US-backed governing body in Iraq did not represent Iraqis in a strong rebuke to Washington's efforts to launch a democratic process in the country.

Thousands of Shi'ites converged on the holy city to hear Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr call for an Islamic army and a new constitution.

"We condemn the Governing Council headed by the United States," Sadr said in a fiery sermon at Koufa mosque near Najaf.

"An Islamic army must be created and volunteers for this great army must come forward."

The 25-member Governing Council was inaugurated on Sunday. Thirteen members are Shi'ites, mostly returned exiles with links to the United States.

Most Shi'ite religious leaders, who wield vast powers among the Shi'ite majority that had been oppressed by Saddam, have expressed delight at his downfall and declared opposition to armed attacks on US and British forces.

In the Sunni areas of central Iraq, prayer leaders sent a mixed message with clerics in Falluja urging calm while in Baghdad there were calls to resist the occupation.

The US military said on Friday it had detained 611 people, including 62 former "regime leaders", in its latest operation aimed at eliminating armed Iraqi resistance.

Operation Soda Mountain mounted 141 raids, seizing 4297 mortar rounds, 1346 rocket-propelled grenades and more than 635 other weapons, it said.

US troops in the Sunni city of Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace, also blew up a large statue of the Iraqi leader, a military spokesman said.

US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair strongly defended the war when they met in Washington on Thursday.

In a speech to the US Congress, Blair said history would forgive the United States and Britain for invading Iraq, even if they were proved wrong about the threat from its suspected weapons of mass destruction.

"If we are right, as I believe with every fibre and instinct of conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive," Blair said.

Bush insisted Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and had been trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programme.

A US military spokeswoman in Baghdad said on Friday Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had arrived in Iraq but could not say what he would be doing.

Wolfowitz, a powerful deputy to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is seen as one of the most hawkish figures in the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

A team of experts, invited by Rumsfeld to assess Iraqi reconstruction, issued a report on Thursday asserting "the next three months are crucial to turning around the security situation, which is volatile in key parts of the country".

They recommended "the entire effort be immediately turbo-charged" by swiftly increasing funding for reconstruction and involving many more Iraqis in rebuilding the country.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq