Leaflets call for 'day of resistance' in Baghdad

Leaflets distributed in Baghdad called for a "Day of Resistance" today at the start of a three-day general strike to protest the US occupation of the city a day after fresh anti-American violence left two Iraqis dead.

US troops battled Iraqi rioters when a dispute over a marketplace just outside the Iraqi capital exploded into fury yesterday. Two Iraqis were killed, and 19 others, including two US soldiers, were reported wounded as rioters waved portraits of Saddam Hussein.

A bomb exploded yesterday morning near a US military patrol outside Khaldiyah, west of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding four others, the US military reported.

In Fallujah, on Baghdad’s western outskirts and a centre of the anti-US resistance, an explosion and fire struck the office of the mayor, who has co-operated with the US occupation. In a melee that followed, one Iraqi was killed. Later yesterday, US troops came under attack at the same spot.

Three or four US soldiers were wounded in the northern city of Mosul late yesterday when assailants threw a grenade at them from a speeding car, Iraqi police said.

Meanwhile, An Islamic clergymen’s association issued a statement for Friday prayer congregations denouncing as sinful any Muslim’s support for the Americans. “Supporting them is apostasy,” it said, “… a betrayal of religion.”

Rumours spread through Baghdad that bombings or other resistance action would strike the capital today. A street leaflet attributed to the ousted Baathists declared it would be the “Day of Resistance” and also called for a three-day general strike to begin today.

The Australian government warned that a Baghdad hotel popular with foreign journalists and aid workers could be targeted for an attack, and urged all Australians in Iraq to stay away.

“The Australian government has received credible reports of imminent terrorist threats to the district of the al Hamra Hotel in central Baghdad,” the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned in its latest travel advisory late yesterday. “These reports indicate a particular threat over the next two weeks beginning on November 1.”

The fresh violence flared as US forces contended with an upsurge in the six-month-old campaign of ambushes and bombings by the shadowy resistance forces, who now strike almost three dozen times a day, mostly in central Iraq.

The US command is grappling with unanswered questions of who is behind the harassing attacks, how co-ordinated they are, and how to bring them under control. Officials variously blame die-hard Saddam loyalists, foreign and local Islamic extremists, and even released criminals, and some suggest Saddam himself may be plotting some attacks.

Before dawn yesterday, US troops sealed off Saddam’s birthplace village of Uja, about 95 miles north of Baghdad, where relatives of Saddam and adherents of his Baath Party have long been suspected of maintaining contacts with the ousted leader.

US troops ringed the village with razor wire, set up checkpoints and began issuing identity cards to villagers to control their movements.

The bloody, on-and-off clashes in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, broke out yesterday morning when US troops tried to clear market stalls from a main road, Iraqi police reported.

The reason for the US action and the sequence of events remained unclear, but at some early point someone tossed a grenade at US soldiers, slightly wounding two, US Army 1st Lt. Joseph Harrison said at the scene, and mortar rounds fell on a nearby police station.

Young Iraqis threw stones at soldiers and tanks, set tyres ablaze, and brandished Saddam portraits, shouting religious slogans.

Gunfire broke out sporadically, but then the Iraqis retired for midday prayers in nearby mosques.

When they returned to the market, gunfire erupted again as more US armoured vehicles moved in.

Ten explosions and machine-gun fire were heard, and US helicopters hovered overhead.

In late afternoon, the bodies of two Iraqi men – identified by friends as Mohammed Auweid, 45, and Hamid Abdullah, 41 – were carried from the sealed-off area.

Nearby Shula Hospital received 17 wounded civilians, said the hospital’s Dr Imad Ali. He said three were in critical condition. The Americans said they arrested two Iraqis found carrying a mortar firing tube.

Some 40 miles to the west, an explosion rocked the centre of Fallujah at midday, and thick, black smoke billowed from the mayor’s office. The town hall had been the target of previous attacks as well, since its leadership began co-operating with the US military last April.

Firemen extinguished the flames, and no casualties were reported, but authorities said one Iraqi was killed and one wounded when residents converged on the scene outraged that their district was again the target of an attack because it was associated with the US occupation.

Police shot and killed the man during the argument, civil defence officer Ahmed Khalil said.