Baghdad - Another United States soldier has been killed in Iraq as an armed supporter of Saddam Hussein said followers of the ousted president were fighting across one-third of the occupied country.
The rebel tribal chief said the fugitive former president was personally directing the insurgency which is still dogging US troops eight months after they entered the Iraqi capital, and on Sunday claimed the life of a US soldier in the main northern city of Mosul.
"Saddam Hussein is in good health and living in the west of Iraq," said the man who is involved in the struggle and calls himself only Abu Mohammad.
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"The Iraqi president is commanding the military operations against the American forces," he said Saturday.
| 'The Iraqi president is commanding the military operations against the American forces' |
Baath nationalist politician working to set up a new party to support the resistance.
The politician said Saddam presided over a meeting of "dozens of Baath party cadres" at Ramadi at iftar, the meal ending the daily dawn-to-dusk fast during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
A dissident Baath figure confirmed the secret meeting saying it took place on November 8, the same day General John Abizaid, commanding officer of US Central Command, gathered tribal leaders in Ramadi to try to work out how to halt anti-coalition attacks.
Abu Mohammad disclosed that he met Saddam who, he said, pays unannounced visits to Iraqis. "There is no risk to him in the west because people are defending him and will never betray him," the tribal leader claimed.
Washington is offering a $25-million reward for information leading to the capture of the former president who was overthrown in April.
Meanwhile, the commander of US forces in the country, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez warned that violence in Iraq can be expected to increase, although US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised Iraqis that American troops would stay on until they have eliminated all vestiges of Saddam's regime.
The latest US troop fatality occurred in the troubled northern city of Mosul when a roadside bomb exploded as a military convoy passed by, a US officer at the scene said. Another two soldiers were wounded.
The incident raises to 190 the total number of US combat deaths in Iraq since May 1, when President George Bush declared major operations over.
However, Iraqi civilians continue to suffer the brunt of anti-coalition attacks. A 12-year-old boy was killed by an insurgent bomb that had been disguised as a heap of rubbish south-east of Baghdad, the US-led coalition said on Sunday.
US Central Command also said on Sunday that US surveillance helicopters had killed an Iraqi insurgent after coming under fire in the past 24 hours in the Ramadi area, 100km west of the capital, during reconnaissance of a suspected ambush location, a statement said.
On Friday, four Iraqi civilians were killed and a dozen wounded when insurgents detonated a bomb in a crowded Baghdad shopping street when a US convoy passed, also killing a soldier.
Violence was expected to increase as Newsweek magazine reported three top emissaries of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden told associates of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in Afghanistan last month that the al-Qaeda network would be shifting most of its operations to a new front in Iraq.
The shift of the main theatre of operation was ordered by bin Laden himself because the terror chieftain and his top lieutenants see a great opportunity for killing Americans and their allies in Iraq and neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Newsweek said.
In a broadcast on coalition-run Al-Iraqiya television during an unannounced visit to the capital on Saturday, Rumsfeld promised to help Iraqis secure the country "so that Baathist terror is not part of your daily lives but just a sad chapter in the history books."
In a bid to battle the growing insurgency against the occupation, the US is planning to use militias to help restore security.
But a statement by the Committee of Muslim Ulemas in Iraq, which represents Sunnis, who are in the minority but enjoyed privileges under the old regime, warned that US plans to deploy militia forces from the majority Shiite Muslim or Kurdish communities could throw the country into further turmoil.
Using militiamen for this reason would be "to ignore a large section of Muslims and push them into the ranks of the opposition," said the statement.
A coalition spokesperson also said on Sunday that Iraq needs a reconstituted intelligence service despite the terror sown by Saddam's spy network.
"We all know the sensitivity of this subject for the Iraqi people who suffered for decades under the intelligence services (of Saddam)," said the spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, meanwhile, told CNN he was concerned about the risks of the US-led occupation in Iraq transferring sovereignty to an elected government without proper preparation for elections.
He added that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad needed to make a greater effort to secure the border between Syria and Iraq to prevent infiltration by anti-US guerrillas.
In Tokyo, meanwhile, Defence Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba said Japanese troops to be sent to Iraq will focus on humanitarian work in the country's south where basic infrastructure had been long neglected, although no date has been set. - Sapa-AFP
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