Iraqis stage more attacks

Attacks on Allied forces in Iraq continued today and, with shattered glass, blood stains and mangled vehicles littering the landscape, there is growing concern that the occupation could be turning into a fully fledged guerrilla war.

The US military said a soldier was killed in Najaf, and a truck full of Americans driving to Baghdad to phone their families ran over a bomb.

Witnesses said several wounded troops were evacuated by helicopter from the scene of the blast on a dirt road just north-west of the city.

Three Iraqis were being interrogated about the suspected abduction of two American soldiers who went missing from an observation post near the town of Balad, north of the capital, on Wednesday night.

Sgt Patrick Compton, a US military spokesman, said no trace of them or their Humvee vehicle had been found, and that they could be dead.

“We don’t know if they were abducted or they were just killed,” he said.

Attacks on the occupation forces in Iraq have escalated at such a rate in recent days that fresh reports have been coming in almost hourly.

The soldier killed in Najaf, 100 miles south-west of Baghdad, had been investigating a car theft when he was ambushed, Central Command said today.

Attacks elsewhere in Iraq yesterday killed at least two US troops, two Iraqi civilians and wounded at least eight other Americans.

Until recently, most violence against the US-led occupation forces took place in the Sunni Muslim-dominated belt north and west of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein enjoyed a degree of support.

Tuesday’s killing of six British Royal Military Police in a southern Shiite-dominated town will have been particularly worrying for coalition leaders.

Major William Thurmond, a US military spokesman, said the spate of ambushes could be in response to recent raids on Baath party strongholds.

“There have been more attacks recently, but it is probably premature to say this is part of a pattern,” he said. “We have kicked open the nests of some of these bad guys.”

An Iraqi police official, Brigadier Ahmed Khazem, called the ambushes “isolated actions ... carried out by individual mercenaries”.

But Al-Jazeera TV aired statements yesterday from two previously unknown groups urging more attacks on US-led forces in Iraq.

One, by a group calling itself the Mujahedeen of the Victorious Sect, claimed responsibility for recent attacks and promised more.

The other, by the Popular Resistance for the Liberation of Iraq, called for “revenge” against America.

US intelligence officials said they had not previously heard of the two groups and had no way of knowing whether they were credible.

Even before the latest violence began, US intelligence officers had warned ground commanders to expect an increase in attacks on US forces between June 25 and July 10. It was not clear what information that warning was based on.

The US has blamed attacks on isolated remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime and his Sunni Muslim followers, claiming there was no organised resistance.