- TIKRIT (AP) -- Saddam Hussein
is believed to have been hiding out recently in Tikrit, influencing the
anti-American insurgency, the US military said on Monday.
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- Fresh attacks by resistance forces across central Iraq's
guerrilla country were reported to have killed three American soldiers
and wounded five others.
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- "We have clear indication he has been here recently,"
Major Troy Smith, a deputy brigade commander, told reporters in Tikrit,
the fugitive president's hometown and now headquarters for the 4th Infantry
Division.
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- "He could be here right now," he said of Saddam.
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- The insurgents' attacks on US occupation forces averaged
22 a day in the past week, the US military reported on Monday in Baghdad.
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- That's an increase of several a day over the pace of
some weeks earlier, and has resulted in American deaths at a rate of almost
one every two days.
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- The attacks late on Sunday and on Monday, against 4th
Infantry Division troops, occurred in Tikrit and at locations north and
east of here, according to the US command:
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- At 19:45 on Sunday, one division soldier was killed and
another wounded when their Bradley armoured vehicle struck a mine near
Beiji, 50km north of here.
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- At 11:15 on Monday, a division convoy travelling near
Jalyula, in a desolate area 140km east of Tikrit, was ambushed with a makeshift
roadside bomb and small-arms fire. One soldier was killed and two were
wounded.
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- Two hours later, in this Tigris River city 145km north
of Baghdad, attackers struck a Bradley on patrol with a rocket-propelled
grenade, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
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- In another clash typical of Iraq's low-intensity conflict,
101st Airborne Division troops in the northern city of Mosul came under
rocket-propelled grenade fire on Monday night and returned fire, killing
one of their attackers, the division reported.
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- US soldiers not only targets
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- American forces aren't the only targets.
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- Four British soldiers suffered minor wounds in a pair
of roadside explosions on the outskirts of the southern city of Basra on
Monday and police reported that the Iraqi governor of Diyala province was
slightly injured, along with two bodyguards and a bystander, when his car
drove past a roadside bomb 100km north east of Baghdad.
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- Arrests
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- Officials of the American-led occupation said, meanwhile,
that arrests had been made in connection with Sunday's car bombing in the
heart of Baghdad, where eight people were killed, including one or two
suicide bombers, and dozens were wounded when an explosives-packed car
detonated short of its target, a hotel housing Americans and officials
of Iraq's interim ruling council. No details were given on the arrests.
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- 'Sunni triangle'
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- Six months after toppling the Ba'athist regime, the US-led
coalition mostly blames pro-Saddam diehards for the low-level conflict,
which is most intense in Tikrit and other parts of the so-called "Sunni
triangle." Saddam's Ba'ath party drew its strongest support in this
Sunni Muslim-dominated region north and west of Baghdad.
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- Iraqis say resisters probably also include others as
well, men resentful of the foreign army's presence and perhaps seeking
to avenge kinsmen's deaths at American hands. But the US military says
Saddam's Fedayeen militia and his most loyal supporters are apparently
financing and organizing the attacks.
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- Smith, executive officer of the 4th Infantry Division's
1st Brigade, said Saddam is believed to be exerting some control over anti-US
guerrilla attacks around Tikrit.
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- If he isn't in Tikrit at the moment, he said, "at
the least, he is maintaining a strong influence in the area."
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- He didn't elaborate on intelligence information leading
the military to conclude Saddam has been in the Tikrit area, but he expressed
confidence in the quality of the information. "Where else would he
go to?" he said. "He has family and tribal roots here."
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- Some other key regime figures still at large could be
in the Tikrit area, Smith said. Of the 55 Iraqis on the coalition's most
wanted list, 38 are in custody, 14 are at large and three are either dead
or thought to be dead.
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- Those still free "obviously have the money to pay
the average poor Iraqi to shoot at coalition forces," Smith said.
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- In other developments:
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- - In Ankara, Turkey's military said that if Turkish peacekeepers
are sent to Iraq they would be deployed in the centre of the country. The
possible deployment is under discussion between US occupation authorities
and Iraq's interim Governing Council, which in principle opposes a Turkish
military presence in Iraq.
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- - The coalition delivered crate loads of new Iraqi dinars
to Baghdad banks. The new banknotes - minus the old currency's portraits
of Saddam - will be released into nationwide circulation on Wednesday.
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- - The Iraqi Governing Council unveiled its 2004 budget,
with projected spending of $13.5bn, almost all of which would be covered
by an anticipated $12bn in oil revenues. In addition, Iraq's plans rely
heavily on $20.3bn in US reconstruction aid proposed by the US administration
of President George W Bush.
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- - The US-led coalition said in Baghdad it and the government
of Jordan are discussing the training of up to 40 000 new Iraqi police
recruits in Jordan over the next 18 months. The Iraqi police force, rebuilt
since the war, now numbers about 40 000 officers nationwide.
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- - Iraq's Central Criminal Court convicted a ship's captain
and first mate, both Ukrainians, of trying to smuggle Iraqi diesel fuel
out of the country in their tanker, the Navstar.
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- They were sentenced to serve seven years in prison and
pay fines of $2.4m, equal to three times the fuel's value.
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- Coalition naval forces had intercepted the tanker August
4.
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