- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- 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
U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein.
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- 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.
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- Three employees of a U.S.-funded television station were
shot dead at Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, and two Iraqis, including a
child, were killed in fighting between guerrillas and U.S. troops in another
restive town, Falluja.
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- Guerrillas have targeted Iraqis seen as cooperating with
U.S.-led occupying forces, who blame Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic
militants for attacks.
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- 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. U.S. officials blamed that attack on Muslim
militants, possibly linked to al Qaeda.
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- 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.
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- U.S. VOWS TO FINISH IRAQ MISSION
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- President Bush's administration stepped up vows that
guerrilla attacks would not deflect it from its goal of bringing about
a democracy in Iraq.
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- "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 U.S. Governor
Paul Bremer said in a statement.
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- 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.
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- The hotel had been regularly used for news briefings
by the British military and by the civilian administration of Iraq's second
city.
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- The British military spokesman said it was not clear
whether a car bomb or explosives planted in the street caused the blast.
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- 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.
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- Eight U.S. soldiers were wounded in a mortar attack in
Falluja on Thursday, the U.S. army said. Witnesses said a child was one
of two Iraqis killed in a battle that followed.
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- Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations
for the U.S. army in Iraq, told a news conference the battle erupted as
American soldiers were meeting local administrators in municipal offices
in the flashpoint city.
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- Troops opened fire after several mortar rounds struck
and a U.S. 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.
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- Witnesses said a helicopter had come down near Falluja,
but the U.S. army said it had no reports of any incident.
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- The U.S. 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.
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- A senior U.S. 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.
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- At first light, smoke still rose from a smoldering 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.
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- - Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Baquba
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- http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4599138
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