US launches crackdown on armed resistance in Iraq

9.15am

BAGHDAD - US forces backed by warplanes and armoured vehicles launched an operation today to crack down on armed resistance in areas north of Baghdad where Saddam Hussein once enjoyed wide support.

Washington's top civilian official in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said US-led forces would suffer further casualties until Saddam loyalists were killed or captured. However, US army commander Tommy Franks, who led the swift defeat of Iraq's army, said recent attacks on US troops did not "spoil the victory".

Bremer signalled Washington believed Saddam, toppled from power on April 9, may still be alive despite attempts during the Iraq war to kill him in bombing raids based on intelligence.

"I'm assuming he's still alive, and we will get our hands on him, dead or alive," Bremer told CNN.

US forces, who have come under fire almost daily in recent weeks in mainly Sunni Muslim central Iraq and sustained soldiers killed, detained more than 60 people and seized weapons and military documents as part of the crackdown.

"No coalition forces casualties were reported in the raids. (Operation) Sidewinder is...ongoing," US Central Command said in a statement on the mission stretching from the Iranian border to the east to towns north of the capital.

In another statement, Central Command said 15 people were arrested and some weapons confiscated during raids in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq on Saturday. The raids targeted followers of a Wahabi Muslim fundamentalist leader, it said.

Soldiers also imposed tighter measures around military posts, US-led administration offices and ministry buildings in the city of five million, witnesses said. They also stepped up search operations for weapons and wanted Saddam loyalists.

In the latest of a series of hit-and-run attacks, an Iraqi civilian was killed and two US military police were wounded in Baghdad when an explosion targeted a US convoy.

The United States blames remnants of Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitary force and his Baath Party for the attacks, but many Iraqis have warned of widespread discontent if Washington does not quickly restore government to Iraqi hands and rebuild the war-battered nation.

At least 22 Americans have been killed by hostile fire since US President George W Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

"Will the problems in Iraq and the attacks spoil the victory achieved by the Americans? Of course not," Franks, retiring commander of US Central Command, said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.

"It is a certainty that the regime of Saddam Hussein is gone from Iraq... It is also a certainty that some 25 (million), maybe 26 million, Iraqis have a brighter future today than they had three or four months ago," he said.

Three US deaths reported on Saturday took to more than 200 the number of Americans who have died, both in combat and non-combat incidents, since the Iraq war began on March 20.

Bremer, top US civil administrator in Iraq, told BBC television that remnants of Saddam's government still fighting would either be killed or captured.

"It is unfortunately the case, we will continue to take casualties. But there is no strategic threat to the coalition here," Bremer said.

In Majjar, about 380km south of Baghdad, there was no sign on Sunday of British forces in the town where gunmen killed six British soldiers last week.

Britain's Defence Ministry in London said a force of 500 troops returned to Majjar on Saturday where commanders met a delegation of Shi'ite Muslim clerics and local dignitaries.

The troops told people they wanted to help them re-establish their community, not punish them, the ministry said.

Majjah residents said the force, which drove into the town in about 40 military vehicles, stayed for only three hours. The British informed town leaders they had no plans to stay, the residents said.

They said the force checked the police station where most of the soldiers died last Tuesday. At least four Iraqis were also killed in the shooting.

"The situation is stable here... We don't need the British," Mohammad al-Shumari, a local dignitary, said.

The Majjah killings were the first British deaths since the toppling of Saddam on April 9. Until last Tuesday the British occupation of southern Iraq, populated mainly by the country's majority Shi'ites who were oppressed by Saddam for a quarter of a century, had been largely peaceful.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq