One year on, Iraq plagued by death and chaos

BLOODY turmoil reigned in Iraq yesterday, the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall.

Sunni and Shi'ite rebels battled US-led forces and held three Japanese and other foreign hostages.

Fierce fighting that has convulsed the Sunni cities of Falluja and Ramadi reached the western fringe of Baghdad, where insurgents killed nine people in an attack on a US fuel convoy, and said they had seized four Italians and two Americans.

A journalist saw two captive foreigners in a mosque in a village in the Abu Ghraib district. One was wounded in the shoulder. Both men were weeping.

At the scene of the convoy attack, a dead foreigner lay on the road with a bloody head as an Iraqi beat him. Teenage fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles lurked on bridges or in derelict areas near the main highway leading west toward the embattled town of Fallujah.

Iraq's US administrator Paul Bremer said US forces had unilaterally suspended operations in Falluja at midday after a crackdown on guerrillas to allow aid in and talks with insurgents.

This week's bloodshed, engulfing the hitherto quiescent Shi'ite south as well as the bastions of Sunni insurgency in central Iraq, has shown how far the US is from securing the country whose dictator it toppled on April 9, 2003.

Iraqis traumatised by 35 years of Ba'athist rule then hoped Saddam Hussein's removal would bring them freedom and a better life.

Today, they face an uncertain future after 12 months of violence that is sapping a reconstruction drive, hampering oil exports and frightening off foreign investors.

Since Sunday, at least 41 US and allied soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in fighting. A British civilian was also killed in Iraq, the foreign office in London said. He was working for a US security firm.

Baghdad streets were quiet yesterday as many residents feared more violence.

"America is the big devil and Britain and Blair are the lesser devils," a preacher at Baghdad's Um al-Qura mosque told an angry congregation.

Reflecting a growing hostility to outsiders, one worshipper said: "When we get the order for jihad (holy war), no foreigner will be safe in Iraq."

Mr Bremer announced the Fallujah ceasefire after five days of street fighting. The director of the main hospital said 450 Iraqis had been killed and 1,000 wounded there this week.