Iraqi resistance more lethal, US commander says
BAGHDAD -- In a week that has seen five more US combat deaths and left 41 soldiers wounded, the commander of military forces in Iraq indicated yesterday that resistance to the occupying troops was strengthening and warned Americans to brace for more casualties.
With 313 American soldiers dead in the conflict so far, more than half since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said at a weekly news briefing here, "This is still wartime."
"There is still some intense fighting to be done, especially out in the west," he said. "We should not be surprised if one of these mornings we wake up and . . . there has been a major firefight with some casualties or a significant terrorist attack that kills significant numbers of people."
Sanchez said the US-led forces are engaging resistance groups 15 to 20 times a day, on average, with as many as 25 incidents on some days. Military spokesmen have consistently cited lower figures, about 13 a day.
The general added that the resistance was showing signs of improved organization. Though most attacks against US forces are being carried out by small, locally based groups apparently acting on their own, there are indications that the resistance is beginning to operate under a broader, more regional control, Sanchez said.
A string of events yesterday, including gunfire and a land mine explosion in and near the troubled city of Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, served as a reminder that resistance remained strong.
A spokesman at the US military command headquarters in Baghdad said a vehicle in a convoy traveling west of Fallujah hit the mine. There were no American casualties, the spokesman said. Hours earlier, US forces in Fallujah exchanged small-arms fire with an Iraqi gunman outside the mayor's office, but the same spokesman reported that there were no casualties.
Three uniformed Americans were killed in attacks on Wednesday.
Sanchez stressed that US forces were improving their ability to confront the resistance, a statement echoed yesterday in Washington by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who defended American progress in Iraq.
At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan told a closed-door gathering of Security Council members that the world body must be given a leading role in shaping Iraq's political transition or it would not be involved in the nation at all, according to several diplomats and UN officials who attended the meeting. Annan has been seeking a major role for the UN in helping Iraqis draft a constitution and hold elections. His ultimatum could be another setback to US efforts at the world body to obtain international help in stabilizing the country.
Except for a soldier who was killed on patrol in Baghdad, the encounters between US forces and resistance fighters on Wednesday and yesterday occurred in a relatively small part of Iraq along the Euphrates River west of the capital known as the Sunni Triangle because of the high concentration of Sunni Muslims living there.
Sanchez noted yesterday that more foreign fighters and terrorists had become involved in the attacks against Americans since organized resistance first began to become a major concern during the second half of May.
