- (AFP) - The top US commander in Iraq has issued a grim
warning that violence is set to rise in the run-up to the handover of power
to Iraqis from daily assaults on the occupation forces.
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- The post-war US combat death toll hit 190 on Sunday when
a soldier died in the northern city of Mosul from a roadside bomb which
also injured two of his colleagues.
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- An anti-US insurgent was also blown up shortly afterwards
when he tried to plant explosives on a main road in the centre of Mosul,
said police. He died just after two Iraqi policemen were shot and wounded
in another attack in the city.
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- US surveillance helicopters also killed an Iraqi insurgent
on Saturday in the Ramadi area, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad.
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- Lieutentant General Ricardo Sanchez said Sunday that
the raging insurgency could be expected to intensify and the targets to
widen right through June and July.
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- And a rebel tribal chief told AFP fugitive former president
Saddam Hussein was personally directing the insurgency across one third
of Iraq from hideouts west of the capital.
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- Sanchez vowed the coalition would eventually capture
or kill Saddam, describing him as "the needle in the haystack"
and "a hard problem".
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- "We expect to see an increase in violence as we
move towards the transfer of sovereignty at the end of June," he said
predicting that anti-coalition forces would step up the fight to try to
prevent the power transfer.
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- "By the time we pass sovereignty back to the Iraqi
people those (enemy) forces will have to conduct some sort of operation
against the political and economic sector while keeping pressure on the
military to derail that process," he said.
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- At the same time, US-led forces would remain on an offensive
which the generals have credited with halving attacks on their men, if
only to see a surge in the killing of Iraqis.
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- "The only way you win in combat is to stay on the
offensive. We will continue to do that but it will be an offensive that
is based on intelligence, that is coordinated with the Iraqi people,"
said Sanchez.
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- Adding to the explosive situation, Newsweek magasine
reported that the al-Qaeda terror network was shifting most of its operations
to a new front in Iraq.
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- Three top emissaries of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden
told associates of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar last month
of the plan, the weekly said in its Monday edition.
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- The shift of the main theater of operation was ordered
by bin Laden himself because he and his top lieutenants see a great opportunity
for killing Americans and their allies in Iraq and neighboring countries
such as Turkey, Newsweek said.
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- Bin Laden believes that Iraq is becoming the perfect
battlefield to fight the "American crusaders" and that the Iraqi
insurgency has been "100 percent successful so far," the report
quoted a Taliban participant at the meeting who goes by the nom de guerre
Sharafullah as saying.
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- General Sanchez also defended the growing use of Iraqi
Civil Defence Corps personnel, many of them former militiamen, to back
up the coalition military.
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- Sunni leaders have warned however of a descent into civil
war if former Kurdish rebels or Iran-trained Shiite militants are deployed
in Sunni areas.
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- "These units will conduct operations under the command
and control of coalition forces. We will have our own liaison officers
embedded," said Sanchez.
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- "We will have control of where they conduct operations
and we see that continuing for some time."
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- Sunni religious leaders warned Sunday that using militiamen
to help restore security to Iraq would be "to ignore a large section
of Muslims and push them into the ranks of the opposition."
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- A statement issued by the Committee of Muslim Ulema in
Iraq, a body set up after Saddam's overthrow in April, said it would be
"an attempt to break up Iraq," recalling the Lebanese civil war
between 1975 and 1990 when rival militias battled for control.
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- "This is a way to divide and rule by exploiting
confessionalism and racism," the Sunni clerics said.
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- Iraq's US-installed interim Governing Council is reportedly
divided over the militia question.
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