US forces kill six militants and three civilians

US soldiers destroyed two buildings being used by insurgents in a town in Anbar province, killing six militants, two women and a boy believed to be under two, the military said today.

It was the latest of several recent raids during which women or children have been killed or wounded as US forces attacked insurgents in residential areas. In some of the attacks, the US command accused the militants of using civilians as “human shields” or buildings as “safe houses.”

Meanwhile, the death toll from yesterday’s triple car bombing at a food market in a predominantly Shiite area in central Baghdad, rose to 53 civilians dead and 121 wounded, said police Col. Nabil Abdul Kadir.

Three parked cars blew up nearly simultaneously as shoppers were buying fruit, vegetables, meat and other items in the busy al-Sadriyah district. The blasts at sent clouds of black smoke over concrete high-rise buildings in the area, which has narrow alleys that made it difficult for ambulances and fire engines to navigate.

A cheese vendor who was wounded said the market was full of people shopping on their way home from work.

“We heard a big explosion from the western side of the area and the second from the eastern side. After one minute the third explosion took place near us,” Ahmed Salman said from a hospital bed.

It was one of the worst incidents since a bombing and mortar attack killed 215 people and wounded more than 200 in the Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad on November 23 amid increasing retaliatory attacks between Shiites and Sunnis.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the market attack, but it followed a Friday raid by Iraqi forces backed by US helicopters targeting Sunni insurgents in al-Fadhil, less than half a mile away.

The Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq condemned the al-Fadhil raid in a statement on Saturday, alleging six people were killed and 13 detained.

Also on Saturday, gunmen in two cars intercepted a vehicle carrying Haithem Yassin, a Shiite adviser to Iraq’s minister of electricity, in north-east Baghdad, kidnapping him, his driver and two bodyguards, Karim Sultan Jassim, a ministry spokesman, said.

In Washington, it was disclosed that Donald Rumsfeld had submitted a classified memo to the White House two days before he resigned as US defence secretary, calling for major changes in the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy.

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” Rumsfeld wrote in the November 6 memo. “Clearly, what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

On Saturday night in the town of Karmah, coalition ground and air forces killed six insurgents while destroying two buildings that militants were using, the military said. Searching through one of the destroyed buildings, coalition forces also found a weapons cache and the bodies of two women and a boy who was believed to be under 2 years old, the military said. Three suspected insurgents also were detained.

Dr Abdul-Hakim al-Dulaimi, director of the emergency room at Karmah Hospital, said 12 bodies were brought there on Sunday morning: nine Iraqi men, two women in their 40s and a 3-year-old boy. He said seven wounded Iraqis were admitted. Police 1st. Lt. Ahmed Ali and local council member Mohammed Daham said 13 wounded people also were treated at a nearby Jordanian field hospital at around the same time.

But it was not known if these casualties were all the result of the US raid in Karmah.

The town, 50 miles west of Baghdad, is in Anbar province, the large area of western Iraq where many of the country’s Sunni Arab insurgent groups operate.

“Coalition forces take precautions to mitigate risks to civilians while in pursuit of terrorists. However, terrorists continue to put innocent civilians in danger by operating among them,” the US military statement said.

On Friday, near Taji, the US Air Force base just north of Baghdad, American soldiers killed one insurgent and wounded a woman in her 50s “who was being used as human shield by the terrorist,” the US command said.

On Wednesday, two Iraqi women died when US forces backed by aircraft killed eight al Qaida in Iraq insurgents during a raid near Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, the military said.

The day before, American soldiers fought with suspected insurgents in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, killing six Iraqis: one man and five girls, ages 7 months, 12, 14, 15 and 17, the US command said. Another Iraqi woman was wounded. The military quoted residents as saying the building attacked “was a known anti-Iraqi force safe house.”

In other violence on Sunday, a roadside bomb at 7:40 a.m. missed a police patrol near al-Shaab Stadium in east Baghdad, but wounded five civilians, police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said.

In the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb exploded near a British military convoy, wounding three Iraqi civilians in a nearby car, police Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi said.

Near Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a man with explosives hidden beneath his clothes attacked an Iraqi checkpoint, killing three policemen and wounding three, police Col. Anwar Hassan said.

A roadside bomb also hit an Iraqi army patrol in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding another, according to police Capt. Odai Abdul-Rhid.