- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car
bomb attack on a U.S. patrol outside the rebel-held city of Falluja on
Monday killed seven American marines and three Iraqi National Guardsmen,
in the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces in five months.
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- The attack raises the official Pentagon U.S. death toll
for the Iraq war to at least 988.
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- An Internet statement purportedly from a group holding
two French hostages demanded a $5 million ransom for them and gave a 48-hour
deadline to come up with the cash.
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- In an another blow to Iraq's U.S.-backed government,
officials retracted a claim to have captured the most wanted Saddam Hussein
aide still on the run in Iraq.
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- A day after several Iraqi officials reported the capture
of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was sixth on a U.S. list of the 55 most
wanted members of Saddam's regime and had a $10 million price on his head,
the government had to make an embarrassing climbdown and say he had not
been caught after all.
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- "The person that has been arrested, after appropriate
medical tests, was not al-Douri but somebody related to him, who is also
wanted by the state," the Interior Ministry said.
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- The confusion raised questions about the effectiveness
and unity of Iraq's interim government as it prepares for national elections
in January and tries to crush a stubborn insurgency and tackle a wave of
kidnappings.
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- Mustafa Alani, senior consultant at the Dubai-based Gulf
Research Center, said the confusion stemmed from a lack of collective leadership
in the government, which is made up of members of several ethnic, religious
and political groups.
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- "For Iraqis, it must have a psychologically negative
effect on the credibility of the government," he said.
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- NO EXPLANATION
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- On Sunday, the Defense Ministry and two Iraqi ministers
said Ibrahim had been captured near the town of Tikrit, Saddam's former
powerbase, only to be contradicted by other officials.
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- The two ministers gave a detailed account of how Ibrahim
had been captured after a battle in which 150 of his followers were killed
or captured when they tried to thwart his arrest.
-
- But the regional National Guard commander in Tikrit,
and U.S. forces in the area, said they knew nothing about any such battle
and had no information on Ibrahim's capture.
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- There was no immediate explanation from the government
on how so many top officials had been wrong on the reported capture. It
was the second time the government has had to make a major retraction since
it took over formal sovereignty in June.
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- Last month the government said police had entered a shrine
in Najaf without a shot being fired to recapture it from rebel Shi'ite
militiamen holed up inside. The report turned out to be false and the uprising
in Najaf did not end until the following week, when Iraq's most revered
cleric brokered a peace deal.
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- RANSOM DEMAND
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- The authenticity of the Internet statement demanding
a ransom for the French hostages could not be immediately verified. France
had earlier said it was hopeful the men were alive and well and could be
released soon.
-
- Journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were
seized on Aug. 20 by a militant group called the Islamic Army in Iraq,
which initially demanded Paris scrap a law banning Muslim headscarves in
state schools. France refused that demand.
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- Five other foreign hostages held by other groups were
reported to have been freed on Monday.
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- Jordan's foreign minister said four kidnapped drivers
-- three from Jordan and one from Sudan -- were freed, and Ankara said
a Turkish driver had also been released by a separate group after his firm
pledged to stop working in Iraq.
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- - Additional reporting by Omar Anwar and Suzannah Woods
in Baghdad, Paul Carrel in Paris and Alistair Lyon in Amman
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