US forces arrest Iraqi negotiator, strike Falluja

9.00am

US forces have arrested Falluja's chief negotiator after air strikes on the rebel-held city that were part of a US drive to thwart attacks in Iraq during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

But in the capital, Ramadan began with a powerful car bomb that exploded near a police patrol in the city's south, killing 10 civilians, including a family of four passing in their car.

Falluja police, who do not answer to the US-backed interim government, said US marines detained Sunni Muslim cleric Khaled al-Jumaili, the city's police chief and two other police officers while they were moving their families to a nearby resort town for safety from American air raids.

A US military spokesman could neither confirm nor deny the arrest of Jumaili, who had been leading a Falluja delegation in peace talks with the government that broke down this week.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi threatened on Wednesday to attack Falluja unless its people handed over militants loyal to Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said to be holed up there.

Zarqawi, America's deadliest enemy in Iraq, has a US$25 million bounty on his head and Washington ordered a freeze on assets of his group on Friday, a day after Britain.

His group claimed Thursday's twin suicide bombings that killed five people, including three Americans, in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, the heart of the Iraqi administration and the US operation here.

Fierce air strikes hit Falluja after the blasts as US and Iraqi forces intensified pressure on suspected Zarqawi targets in and around the bastion of Sunni insurgency west of Baghdad.

A hospital doctor, Thamim al-Nuaimi, said five civilians had been killed and 11 wounded in the overnight raids.

The military denied the bombing campaign was a prelude to a full-scale assault to wrest Falluja from rebel hands. "This is part of ongoing operations in Falluja. It is not the beginning of a major offensive," a US spokeswoman said.

The military said the Falluja raids at 2.38am hit "command and control sites" used by senior Zarqawi leaders to store weapons and plan attacks, adding that air strikes since Thursday had destroyed many other Zarqawi targets.

Falluja residents have scoffed at such statements in the past, saying they have no knowledge of Zarqawi or his group and accusing the Americans of bombing civilian homes.

Washington and Baghdad have vowed to retake insurgent-held towns and cities before nationwide elections due in January.

Some Iraqis elsewhere in the country say an offensive is the best thing that could happen to Falluja, which has become a byword for Iraq's insurgency over the past 18 months.

"Allawi must attack Falluja in whatever way necessary because they are the main reason for instability in Iraq," said Iman Jadoa, 40, a clerk from the southern Shi'ite city of Basra.

"They must be made to pay."

Others asked why no suicide car bombs ever hit Falluja, and said the city needed to be taught a lesson if Iraqis were to be able to vote in peace.

"I consider any invasion of Falluja a great step - that's where the terrorists are," said Samkoo Mohammed-Ali, a university student in the peaceful Kurdish city of Suleimaniya.

"Why are there no bombings in Falluja? It's because a mosquito doesn't sting itself."

Shi'ite militiamen have been turning weapons in to police in Baghdad's Sadr City district under a five-day cash-for-weapons campaign. The head of the drive said it had been extended for two days because of the overwhelming response.

The deal with followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was intended to halt weeks of fighting with US forces in the sprawling slums in northeastern Baghdad.

Ramadan, observed by Iraq's minority Sunnis from Friday, will start for majority Shi'ites on Saturday.

There was no repeat of the co-ordinated suicide bombings that wrought havoc in Baghdad at the start of Ramadan last year, when at least 40 people were killed in attacks on the International Committee of the Red Cross offices and three police stations.

But the mounting violence in Iraq is undermining efforts to rebuild the shattered country and casting doubt over the timing of its first democratic elections in decades.

On Friday, Britain said gunmen had shot dead a British security contractor in the northern city of Kirkuk this week.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq