US on offensive as death toll mounts

AN American military policeman was killed yesterday as a top American general met local leaders in Iraq’s most dangerous region to tell them attacks must stop.

The MP was killed when insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a patrol in Iskandariyah, 40 miles south of Baghdad.

The death brought to 37 the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq this month.

The downing last week of a Chinook helicopter and the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter made the first week of November the bloodiest for American forces since President George Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1.

US forces intensified anti-insurgency operations west and north of Baghdad, areas which are seen as hotbeds of the anti-American revolt and where most of the coalition deaths occurred.

Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo said there was a "new focus" in the north and west of Baghdad to find areas where Saddam loyalists "and other non-compliant forces are operating."

Another officer said: "We are on offensive operations."

Meanwhile, in Sadr City, a poor, mainly Shi'ite quarter of eastern Baghdad, witnesses said an American soldier shot and killed the head of the district's US-appointed municipal council in a weekend altercation.

General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, met over the weekend with mayors and tribal leaders of Anbar province where the so-called "Sunni Triangle," scene of the heaviest anti-American resistance is located an Iraqi who attended the meeting said yesterday.

Gen Abizaid pointed to Fallujah, one of the main towns in the Sunni Triangle, as a "hot area" and warned that if the city refuses to co-operate "in the rebuilding process", there "might be another policy," said Fallujah Mayor Taha Bedawi.

Also yesterday, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said there were clashes in northern Iraq involving American troops and Turkish Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. The US military information office in Baghdad said it could not confirm the report, but an American official in Turkey, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed clashes took place. The fighting took place when rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, based in northern Iraq shot at a joint American-Iraqi patrol, a Western diplomat in Ankara said, also on condition of anonymity.

One Iraqi Kurdish fighter working with the United States was killed, the diplomat said.

Elsewhere, American forces seized nearly 1,000 rockets during weekend raids in Tikrit and Beiji, north of Baghdad, the 4th Infantry Division said Monday. Soldiers from the division's 3rd Brigade also confiscated 1,500 rounds of 155 mm artillery shells in Balad, south of Tikrit.