Iraq three years on - and the war still rages

VIOLENCE continued across Iraq yesterday on the eve of the anniversary of the US-led invasion.

American troops clashed with gunmen north and west of Baghdad while insurgents lobbed a mortar round into the holy city of Karbala where a million Shi'ite pilgrims assembled for a major religious commemoration.

Iraqis in the capital expressed unease with the increasing violence, which they said they hoped would have ended by now.

"It is a painful anniversary. We were expecting that Iraq would get better," Munthir Rasheed said. "But it is completely in reverse. Iraq has passed through three years which are the worst in its history."

Police said eight civilians, including a child, were killed in clashes between US troops and gunmen in Duluiyah, 72 kilometres north of Baghdad. The town is in the Sunni Arab heartland where the Iraqi army and US soldiers opened an airborne campaign last week to hunt for insurgents.

During operations in Duluiyah, US troops arrested Colonel Farouq Khalil, an Iraqi interior ministry official, after raiding his house, police said. Members of the Iraqi Red Crescent said US troops, citing security concerns, prevented them from delivering relief aid to beleaguered communities in the area.

Elsewhere, two civilians were killed and 10 wounded when gunmen attacked US troops stationed at the governor's office in Ramadi, 112km west of Baghdad.

In the capital, police found the bullet-riddled bodies of three men bound hand and foot and dumped in a sewage treatment plant in the south-east neighbourhood of Rustamiyah. The victims appeared to be the latest in the wave of revenge killings set off by the February 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra.

Assailants in south-west Baghdad also gunned down a man as he was leaving a Shi'ite mosque, police said.

Those deaths came a day after a dozen other suspected victims in the shadowy Shi'ite-Sunni reprisal spree were found in the capital.

Iraq's former interim prime minister said the increasing attacks across his country can only be described as a civil war and warned that the US and Europe could be touched by spreading violence.

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day an average 50 to 60 people, if not more," Ayad Allawi told the BBC.

"If this is not civil war, then God knows what is."

Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, said Iraqi and US troops have failed to bring order and improved infrastructure to the people.

Anti-warp rotests

THE third anniversary of the war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters around the globe, from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana to Australia.

Many of the weekend demonstrations drew smaller-than-anticipated crowds.

In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march on Saturday; last year's anniversary drew attracted 45,000 demonstrators to the city.

At least 1,000 turned out in Seoul, South Korea, which has the third-largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq after the US and Britain.

More than 7,000 people marched through Chicago on Saturday in one of the largest US protests, saying the war diverts money from domestic needs and demanding the US pull out of Iraq. Protesters also gathered in Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and New York.