- BAGHDAD (AFP) - US-led forces
battled a new explosion of violence in Iraq and 12 US Marines were killed
by insurgents in a new trouble spot in the feared Sunni triangle.
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- Between 60 and 70 Iraqi insurgents armed with rocket-propelled
grenades and automatic weapons attacked the marines in a government palace
in Ar Ramadi, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Baghdad, said a US
defense official in Washington.
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- "We had about 12 dead and a couple dozen wounded,"
added the official, who requested anonymity.
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- "We're pretty sure we got most of them in much greater
numbers than us," the official said, adding that followers of Shiite
Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr were suspected of carrying out the attack.
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- Ar Ramadi is in the strife-wracked Sunni Triangle, some
20 miles (32 kilometers) west of Fallujah, where US forces were staging
a separate operation to find those responsible for the killing of four
US security contractors last week.
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- More than 100 Iraqis have been killed and hundreds wounded
in the past three days as coalition troops tackle furious assaults by rebels
loyal to the radical Muslim Shiite cleric Sadr.
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- Around 30 coalition troops, including the Marines, have
now been killed in the same time, military sources said. Some 620 US soldiers
have now been killed since the invasion of Iraq in March last year.
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- US tanks and armored vehicles met heavy resistance as
they rolled into Fallujah as Operation Vigilant Resolve tracked down the
insurgents behind the mutilation of the four Americans.
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- US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that a number
of people had been killed and detained in the operation.
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- The force, backed by AC-130 gunships and Cobra helicopters,
took six hours to secure control of the area, amid hit-and-run attacks
by insurgents firing mortars and assault rifles from rooftops, said US
army's Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne.
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- In the United States, the White House announced that
US generals will decide whether extra troops are needed to handle mounting
unrest in Iraq.
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- President George W. Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan,
said that troop levels in Iraq "are decisions (Bush) leaves to the
military leaders who are in the best position to make those decisions."
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- McClellan also insisted that those responsible for the
increased violence in Iraq were "a small minority" and that most
Iraqis want democracy.
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- Bush said in a speech in El Dorado, Arkansas that the
United States would not move from its plan to hand over power to an interim
Iraqi administration on June 30.
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- "We'll stay the course in Iraq. We are not going
to be intimidated by thugs and assassins. We will not cut and run from
the people who want freedom."
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- Rumsfeld said US commanders have not requested extra
troops. However a senior defence official said Monday the head of Central
Command, General John Abizaid, had asked top officers to prepare options
to reinforce troop levels if necessary.
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- One of the groups that US-led forces in Iraq are fighting
is the Mehdi Army, an armed militia led by Sadr that has battled coalition
forces since the weekend.
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- Coalition authorities in Baghdad issued an arrest warrant
for Sadr in connection with the April 10, 2003 assassination of rival cleric
Abdel Majid al-Khoei.
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- US officials do not see Sadr and his "small number
of followers" as "representative of a religious cause, but rather
as representative of political gangsterism," deputy State Department
spokesman Adam Ereli said.
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- "They're not acting in the name of religion, they're
acting in the name of arrogating for themselves political power and influence
through violence, because they can't it through peaceful persuasion,"
he said.
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- "This is not a question of Islamic extremism versus
secularism, this is a question of civic-mindedness versus thuggery,"
he added.
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- The administration's confidence however was rattled when
Senator Ted Kennedy, an outspoken Bush opponent and supporter of Democratic
presidential hopeful John Kerry, on Monday compared Iraq with the 1961-75
war in Vietnam.
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- In a rare foray into politics, US Secretary of State
Colin Powell rebuked Kennedy, saying that he should be "more restrained
and careful" when discussing Iraq and the war on terrorism "because
we are at war."
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- Kennedy said Iraq "is George Bush's Vietnam, and
this country needs a new president," adding that by going to war,
the United States had angered key US allies, made America "more hated
in the world" and complicated the war on terrorism.
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- Meanwhile British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a key US
ally in Iraq, vowed to hold firm in the face of the bloody clashes in Iraq.
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- "Our response to this should not be to run away
in fright or hide away, or think that we have got it all wrong," Blair
told reporters after meeting Iraq's interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari
in London.
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- "Our response on the contrary should be to hold
firm, because that's what the vast majority of the Iraqi people want."
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- Britain said it was sending up to 5,000 replacement troops
to Iraq, but insisted it was not planning to deploy extra soldiers.
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of Agence France Presse.
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