Rumsfeld warns of pre-election dangers in Iraq

BAGHDAD - Donald Rumsfeld said US troops, celebrating Thanksgiving after some of their bloodiest weeks in Iraq, should brace for even more losses as they pursue insurgents bent on wrecking an election scheduled for January.

The US assault on the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah has already made November the second deadliest month of the war for Americans, Pentagon figures showed.

With time running out to quell rebellion among Saddam Hussein's Sunni minority before the vote, a close aide of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was captured in Mosul.

And US, Iraqi and British forces seized 81 suspected insurgents south of Baghdad, including at country villas used by Saddam's old elite.

"No doubt attacks will continue in the weeks and months ahead, and perhaps intensify as the Iraqi election approaches," Defence Secretary Rumsfeld told reporters in Washington.

As 138,000 US troops celebrated Thanksgiving Day with turkey dinners at bases across Iraq, Pentagon figures showed 109 service personnel have died here in the first three and half weeks of the month. Only this past April has cost more lives.

More than 50 US troops were killed attacking Fallujah. In all, 1230 have died since the invasion of Iraq 20 months ago.

Lieutenant General Lance Smith, whose command includes Iraq, said: "We are intent on trying to provide a secure and stable enough situation to be able to conduct nationwide elections in January. Now, I will not pretend that that's not a challenge."

The biggest Sunni party threatened to boycott the January 30 vote, dealing a blow to hopes for a broad national turnout that would legitimise the new assembly. The Iraqi Islamic Party complained the violence in Sunni areas made voting impractical.

Scattered and bloodied after Fallujah, the Saddam loyalists and international Islamists accused of organising revolt against the US-backed interim government nonetheless mounted attacks.

The US State Department said one of its employees in Baghdad had been shot dead in the capital on Wednesday in an attack claimed in a website posting by Zarqawi's group.

An Iraqi policeman was killed and nine people were wounded when two suicide car bombers attacked a police station and a convoy of US and Iraqi troops in Samarra, north of Baghdad -- a city where US forces last month mounted the first of a series of offensives against Sunni insurgent strongholds.

US troops say they killed about 1200 people at Fallujah.

As they comb the battered city they are finding vast stocks of weaponry. Marines reported their biggest find so far, in a mosque.

But officers played down remarks by an Iraqi minister that they had found a chemical weapons workshop -- they said the chemicals seemed destined for making ordinary explosives.

Iraq's national security minister said a Zarqawi lieutenant named only as Abu Said had been detained in Mosul two days ago.

US commanders believe Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamist who has claimed major bomb attacks and the beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq, had significant operations in Fallujah but was not in the city when US forces went in.

Mosul was hit by a major insurgent attack as US troops were concentrating on Fallujah and Iraq's northern third city remains tense following the rout of its US-trained police.

In another lawless Sunni area, south of Baghdad, British forces claimed success in arresting key guerrilla suspects after a major overnight raid on an area they dubbed "Millionaires' Row" for the wealthy Saddam-era elite who lived there.

Since Tuesday, 5000 US-led troops have swept through a string of towns along the Euphrates river around Iskandariya, 50km south of Baghdad, in a hunt for rebels and bandits who had turned them into no-go areas for government forces.

Operation Plymouth Rock, in an area dubbed the "triangle of death", has involved far less combat than in Fallujah.

Scottish soldiers of the Black Watch regiment made 26 arrests and found bomb-making equipment in overnight searches at sprawling country retreats built for Saddam loyalists.

Hundreds of British troops in armoured vehicles with air support raced through the night to take part in the raid, smashing down doors, hurling stun grenades and blaring out taped bagpipe music to disorientate their sleeping targets.

US and Iraqi forces took 55 more suspects. A US Marine spokesman said 116 people had been captured in three days.

Sunni Arabs, 20 per cent of the population, fear January's election will hand domination to the 60 per cent Shi'ite majority in the south. Sunni disenchantment with the new order in Baghdad has been fuelled by the assaults on Samarra and Fallujah.

The head of the Iraqi Islamic Party joined threats of a Sunni boycott of the election, demanding it be postponed for six months. "We may withdraw," Mohsen Abdul Hamid told Reuters.

The Electoral Commission extended a deadline for parties to register for the election in three Sunni provinces in an apparent bid to encourage Sunnis to take part in the process.

- REUTERS