US commander appeals for international troops
With Washington pushing a new UN resolution aimed at persuading more nations to contribute troops, Russia gave its first signal that it could send peacekeepers to Iraq, and Britain said it was considering whether to increase its force levels.
In Tikrit, meanwhile, US troops battled guerrillas in the streets after a mortar attack. No US casualties were reported.
At a Baghdad news conference, Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander here, said that "if a militia or an internal conflict of some nature were to erupt ... that would be a challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for".
"There are security challenges that are looming in the future that will require additional forces, and those are issues that with the coalition, and with time, can be resolved," he said.
Lt Gen Sanchez said the coalition lacks sufficient troops to protect Iraq's porous borders or its thousands of miles of highways. Iraqi security forces are being trained to eventually patrol both.
However, Sanchez maintained that no more US troops are needed in Iraq. He said that, if a sudden conflict arose, he would reassign forces to deal with it, but added the army's existing missions could suffer as a result.
In what could be a more immediate confrontation, he said US troops would force the Badr Brigade, a Shi'ite Muslim militia, to disarm if reports of its reactivation prove true.
The Badr Brigade is the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. US troops ordered the brigade disarmed and disbanded early in the occupation.
However, on Wednesday, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim a member of the US-picked Governing Council and brother of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who was killed in last week's Najaf car bombing suggested the militia had rearmed to provide security for Shi'ites.
