Rumsfeld warns troops to brace for more attacks

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has warned that American troops, celebrating Thanksgiving after some of their bloodiest weeks in Iraq, should expect more losses as they pursue insurgents bent on wrecking the January 30 election.

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," Rumsfeld said in Washington.

As 138,000 US troops celebrated Thanksgiving Day with turkey dinners at bases across Iraq, Pentagon figures showed that 109 soldiers have died in the country in the first 3 weeks of this month. Only in April were more lives lost.

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. I will not pretend that that's not a challenge."

The Sunni party threatened to boycott the January 30 vote, dealing a blow to hopes for a broad national turnout to legitimise the new assembly.

And the Iraqi Islamic Party complained that 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. Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility in a website posting.

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 American forces last month mounted the first of a series of offensives against strongholds of Sunni insurgents.

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 three days ago.

US commanders believe Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamist who has claimed responsibility for 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.

In a 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.

This week about 5000 US-led troops 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.

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. 


- Reuters