Violence Sweeps Central Iraq

[David]

AP

Fierce battles between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces killed at least nine people Monday in Baqouba ? the latest in a wave of clashes that has swept Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland even as American forces move against the last remaining pockets of resistance in Fallujah.

U.S. officials said the trouble in Baqouba started when insurgents attacked 1st Infantry Division soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire near a traffic circle and police station.

During the fighting, U.S. troops started getting fire from a mosque, the U.S. military said. Iraqi security stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and other weapons and ammunition, the statement said.

Four 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded, although two of them returned to duty, the military said. Nine Iraqis, including one attacker, a policeman and seven civilians, were killed and 11 Iraqis were injured in the fighting, according to Mohammed Zayad of the Baqouba hospital.

Firefights also erupted just south of Baqouba in the town of Buhriz. The two cities are located about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. American aircraft dropped two 500-pound bombs on an insurgent position.

In other recent developments:


Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office confirmed that two of his female relatives who were kidnapped last week have been released. Allawi's cousin, Ghazi Allawi, 75, his cousin's wife and his cousin's pregnant daughter-in-law were abducted at gunpoint last Tuesday in western Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood. There was no word on the cousin, Ghazi Allawi.


A Red Cross spokesman said a relief convoy of ambulances and supplies trying to enter Fallujah was turned back by Iraqi authorities or U.S. Marines on Monday. The Red Crescent and Red Cross have been unable to gain access to people inside Fallujah during more than a week of fighting.


U.S. Marines found the mutilated body of a Western woman Sunday as they searched for militants still holding out in Fallujah. The woman could not be immediately identified, but a British aide worker and a Pole are the only Western women known to have been taken hostage.


An American soldier died Monday as a result of an accident involving a U.S. military truck in Baghdad, the military said. The soldier, identified only as a member of the 13th Corps Support Command, was evacuated by a helicopter to a military hospital but died upon arrival.

The week-old offensive in Fallujah, the city that came to symbolize resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, has left at least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers dead. The number of U.S. troops wounded is now 275, though more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated more than 1,200 insurgents have been killed.

On Monday, U.S. forces resumed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire, with warplanes making between 20-30 bombing sorties in Fallujah and surrounding areas. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the city.

American forces had attacked a bunker complex Sunday in the city's south where they discovered a network of steel-reinforced tunnels and underground bunkers. The tunnels connected a ring of facilities filled with weapons, an anti-aircraft artillery gun, bunk beds and a truck, according to a statement from the U.S. military.

Marines also found the disemboweled body of a Western woman wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket on a street in Fallujah. Two foreign women Margaret Hassan, 59, director of CARE international in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq ? were abducted last month but the body could not be identified without further tests.

Civilians seeking medical care were told through loudspeakers and leaflets to contact U.S. troops. In Geneva, the Baghdad spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ahmed Rawi, said Monday an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy of four ambulances and four trucks carrying supplies reached Fallujah General Hospital on the city's outskirts, but was unable to go further.

The hospital itself was well supplied because no patients or wounded people have been able to reach it from the embattled city, Rawi said.

"Regretfully, there was no patient in sight," he said.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi Red Crescent, the partner organization of the Red Cross, said U.S. forces and the Iraqi government prevented the aid convoy from crossing the Euphrates River into the main part of the city and told it to leave the hospital area as well.

Rawi told The Associated Press by telephone that no reason was given for the refusal.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the Marine general who designed the ground attack on Fallujah said it had gone far more quickly than expected.

Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski on Sunday described the ground war as a "flawless execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule."

As fighting wound down in Fallujah, insurgent attacks escalated elsewhere in Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq.

Clashes between gunmen and Iraqi security forces early Monday south of Baghdad killed seven Iraqi police and national guardsmen and injured five others, police said.

Gunmen carried out near-simultaneous attacks on a police station and an Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Suwayrah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, police said. Two policemen and five National Guardsmen were killed.

The dead included Maj. Hadi Refeidi, the director of the Suwayrah police station.

Before the clashes, National Guardsmen opened fire at a boobytrapped car approaching their headquarters, killing the driver. The car was loaded with 880 pounds of TNT.

In the insurgent-heavy city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital, heavy fighting erupted on Monday between militants and U.S. forces, residents said.