General warns of harsh measures unless attacks stop

The top US general in the Middle East warned community leaders that the military will use stern measures unless they curb attacks against coalition forces, according to an Iraqi who attended the meeting.

General John Abizaid, chief of the US Central Command, delivered the warning to tribal sheikhs and mayors in the “Sunni Triangle” city of Ramadi west of Baghdad, according to Fallujah Mayor Taha Bedawi yesterday.

“We have the capabilities and equipment,” Bedawi quoted the general as saying at Saturday’s meeting.

The warning was another sign of a “get tough” campaign against insurgents, who have accelerated attacks against US and coalition forces in recent weeks. US forces had eased off on raids during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began in late October.

Hours after General Abizaid’s warning, US jets dropped three 500lb bombs in the Fallujah area after three US paratroopers were wounded in an ambush. There was no report of casualties from the bombing.

The US military said insurgents struck again late on Sunday, firing a rocket-propelled grenade at a military police convoy near Iskandariya, 40 miles south of Baghdad, and killing a soldier.

The soldier was the 37th US service member to die in Iraq this month and 394th killed since the start of the war.

The British military has reported 52 deaths. Denmark, Spain, Ukraine and Poland reported one each.

The Bush administration, confronting a rising casualty toll in Iraq, said yesterday that “nothing of value has ever been won without sacrifice”.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice also said a surge of attacks against US forces does not represent a return to major combat operations.

“What has happened is there are some elements of the old regime that are making common cause with some foreign fighters in what I think could classically be described as an insurgency or insurgency plus terrorism,” she said in Washington.

But a US officer in Saddam’s hometown, Tikrit, said yesterday that there were no signs foreign radicals have gained a foothold there.

US Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell said gunmen killed or captured during recent attacks against coalition forces were Saddam loyalists and “we have yet to kill or capture a foreign fighter in Tikrit”.

Tensions between US forces and Iraqis in the Shiite Muslim enclave, Sadr City, rose yesterday after the head of the US-appointed municipal council, Muhanad al-Kaadi, was shot and killed by an American soldier guarding municipal headquarters.

The US military said the shooting occurred on Sunday when al-Kaadi got into an argument with a soldier guarding the council headquarters. The statement blamed the altercation on “his refusal to follow instructions of the onsite security officer who was enforcing” regulations “in accordance with the rules of engagement”.

A US medic administered first aid and rushed him to a military clinic where he was pronounced dead, a US statement said.

Al-Kaadi, who spoke fluent English, had been trying to improve relations between the Americans and residents of the impoverished community.

In Mosul, an oil official was wounded and his son killed when assailants opened fire at their car in the northern city yesterday, his family said.

Mohammed Ahmed Zibari, the Northern Oil Company’s distribution manager, was headed to work when gunmen riddled his car with bullets, his brother Nawzat Zibari said. The brother speculated that Zibari was killed by “terrorists” because they believed he was co-operating with the Americans.