US bases attacked in Iraq

Insurgents attacked several US bases and government offices with mortars and rockets today before dispersing in Ramadi, the capital of western Iraq’s Anbar province.

The attacks occurred as local tribal leaders and US military officials were to hold their second meeting in a week at the governor’s office in the city centre.

Residents said that within minutes, scores of masked gunmen, believed to be members of Jordan-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq group, ran into the city’s streets but dispersed after launching attacks with mortars and Russian-made Katyusha rockets.

It wasn’t clear if the attacks left any casualties, but most residents fled to their homes after the exchange began.

Ramadi is the provincial capital of Anbar province, a Sunni stronghold, where clashes between insurgents and US and Iraqi troops have left hundreds of people dead in the past two years.

US and Iraqi troops launched a joint operation near Ramadi yesterday, sweeping through an area used to rig car bombs.

About 500 Iraqi troops joined 2,000 US Marines, soldiers and sailors in a move to clear insurgents from an area on the eastern side of the Euphrates river near Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad, the US command said in a statement.

The offensive came as President Bush said he hoped to shift more of the military burden onto the Iraqis as part of a strategy to draw down American forces.

In a statement, the military said the Hai Al Becker region “is suspected to be an al-Qaida in Iraq safe area and base of operations for the manufacture of vehicle car bombs, roadside bombs”. It described the area as a transit point for foreign fighters and Iraqi insurgents infiltrating Iraq from Syria.

There were no reports of casualties during the first day of the operation, part of a series of sweeps through Sunni Arab towns along the Euphrates believed to be major insurgent strongholds.

Residents reached by telephone said US forces warned townspeople by loudspeakers to stay in their homes for the next three days.

Two US service members died of wounds suffered in combat and a Marine died in a non-hostile traffic accident, the US military said today. That raised the US death toll for November to at least 84.

The victims included a Task Force Baghdad soldier who died of gunshot wounds received yesterday and a Marine who died of wounds suffered the same day in Fallujah, the US command said. The traffic accident involving a Marine from the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing occurred near Camp Taqaddum, 45 miles west of Baghdad, another military statement said.

The November death toll was below the October figure of 96 – the fourth deadliest month for US forces since the US-led invasion began in March 2003. But it was more than the 49 killed in September or the 54 in July. Eighty-five US troops died in August.

In Baghdad, the US military said American and Iraqi forces rounded up 33 suspected insurgents in a sweep on Tuesday night through southern parts of the capital. Clashes broke out late yesterday between insurgents and Iraqi forces in the Mansour area of western Baghdad, police said.

US commanders have been using Iraqi forces in the recent Euphrates Valley operations, although American forces continue to bear the brunt of the fighting.

“As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists,” Bush told an audience at the US Naval Academy. He refused to set a timetable for a US withdrawal.

In Baghdad, presidential Lieutenant General Wafiq al-Samaraei told the US-run Alhurra television that as Iraqi forces improved, the Americans would be able to draw down their troop levels.

“If America is defeated in Iraq, it will be defeated in the whole world,” he said. “It is not a question of supporting America but of the interests and well-being of Iraq.”

Also yesterday, a group of influential Sunni clerics called for the release of five Westerners taken hostage last week, saying they should be granted their freedom as a humanitarian gesture.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, believed to have contacts with some Sunni insurgent groups, has helped mediate the release of other Western captives in Iraq.

The five include four aid workers from the group Christian Peacemaker Teams - Tom Fox, 54, from the US; Norman Kember, 74, from the United Kingdom; James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both from Canada; and German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff, 43.

On Tuesday, Al-Jazeera broadcast video of the four men held by a previously unknown group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The group claimed they were spies working under the cover of Christian peace activism.

The Sunni association said releasing Osthoff would recognise Germany’s “positive” stand toward Iraq. Germany strongly opposed the US-led invasion in 2003.

Kidnappers have threatened to kill Osthoff and her driver, who were kidnapped last Friday, unless Germany halts all contacts with the Iraqi government.