Shift seen in target of Iraqi guerrillas

BAGHDAD -- Guerrillas thought loyal to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein are shifting away from attacks against American troops in favor of killing and terrorizing Iraqi civilians who cooperate with the US-led coalition occupying the country, the chief of US Central Command said yesterday.

General John Abizaid said that the aggressive American anti-insurgency campaign underway in Baghdad and in the "Sunni Triangle" region to the north and west has resulted in a sharp decline in attacks on US soldiers, although the soldiers from four Army divisions are still very much under the gun.

"The offensive actions [by US troops] have driven down the attacks against coalition forces," he said in a Baghdad news conference. "Unfortunately, we have found attacks against Iraq civilians have increased."

But only hours after he spoke, huge blasts rattled nighttime Baghdad, and loudspeakers at the American-controlled "Green Zone" at the heart of the city urged soldiers and personnel to take cover. "Attack! Take cover! This is not a test."

Abizaid said the number of daily attacks against American soldiers has dropped by half in the past two weeks. He did not give a figure, but in early November US officials said troops were coming under attack by gunfire, bomb blasts, rockets, and mortar shells about 30 to 35 times a day. The insurgency has taken the lives of 185 US soldiers since May 1, when President Bush announced the end of major combat.

During the same news conference, however, the chief US administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, warned that insurgent attacks are likely to intensify in the months leading to the planned creation of a democratic government next summer. But he said that Iraqi civilians, not US troops, may bear the brunt of the violence.

"The security situation has changed," Bremer said. "In the past, attacks against the coalition were predominant. Now terrorist attacks against Iraqis are regular.

"They have begun a pattern of trying to intimidate innocent Iraqis," he said.

Last night, several loud blasts rattled rooms near central Baghdad, including the quick thump-thump-thump bursts of what sounded like heavy mortars. The heavier explosions were punctuated by gunfire as well as by firecrackers lit by Muslim merrymakers celebrating the arrival of Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

A coalition spokeswoman said late last night that the blasts occurred outside of the Green Zone at a police station, a bus station, and a third, unspecified location. She had no information on casualties.

Although American soldiers have been targeted in recent days, with three killed in ambushes over the weekend, the biggest attacks have been mounted on Iraqi police stations in the Sunni Triangle towns of Baqubah and Khan Bani Saad, as well as the assassination Sunday of the police chief of Latifiyah, a suburb of Baghdad.

In the suicide car bomb attacks on the police stations, many civilians were also killed or wounded, including a 4-year-old girl who bled to death after her legs were blown off.

Police stations are usually badly guarded and barely fortified, and the officers themselves under-trained, underequipped, and suffering from low morale.

The United States has said Iraq urgently needs more than 100,000 new police officers. But only about 10,000 are presently in training, and there have been reports that hundreds are resigning from local forces for fear of being killed by insurgents.

Of the shadowy insurgents, Bremer said: "They have failed to intimidate the coalition. . . . They will not succeed [in intimidating Iraqis]. If Saddam Hussein taught the Iraqis nothing else, it was how to endure the depredations of thugs."

Active insurgents are believed to number no more than 10,000 or so, composed mainly of Hussein loyalists as well as violent criminals sprung from his jails in the final days of his regime.

The criminals may be attacking Americans for pay, one senior Western intelligence official said yesterday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Abizaid rejected the notion that there were vast numbers of foreign fighters in the worsening Iraq conflict, referring to radical Islamists and followers of Osama bin Laden infiltrating Iraq in hopes of turning the country into the front line in an envisioned holy war against the United States.

"Foreign fighters are coming in, [but] it is not correct to say there are floods of foreign fighters coming in. The number is small," Abizaid said.

In other developments:

The Fourth Infantry Division said soldiers arrested 18 suspected insurgents or terrorists during nearly 200 raids over the past 24 hours in a sector north of Baghdad, according to the Associated Press.

Care-Australia became the latest relief agency to pull its staff from Iraq, citing "specific threats" from a group calling itself Iraq Resistance to kill its members. The Care compound in Baghdad came under rocket attack on the weekend.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that Iraq Resistance issued a warning to Care and, by implication, all foreigners in Iraq: "We are going to kill you and attack your places without any further notice. We are letting you know that the deadline for all such places, hotels, houses, oil companies will be the third and last day of Eid."

A Pentagon spokesman, Army Major Joe Yoswa, on Monday disputed the accounts of some witnesses of the ambush of two US soldiers as they drove trough a working-class neighborhood of Mosul on Sunday.

Witnesses said an Iraqi mob, most of them teenagers, dragged the two bloodied soldiers from the vehicle after they had been shot, threw them to the ground, and pummeled them with concrete blocks. Yoswa said there was no indication the men were beaten with rocks or that their bodies were mutilated.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.