Hussein in Tikrit recently, US believes

TIKRIT, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein is believed to have been hiding out recently in Tikrit, influencing the anti-American insurgency, the US military said yesterday.

Fresh attacks by resistance forces across central Iraq were reported to have killed three American soldiers and wounded five others.

"We have clear indication he has been here recently," Major Troy Smith, a deputy brigade commander, told reporters in Tikrit, Hussein's hometown and now the headquarters of the Fourth Infantry Division. "He could be here right now," he said.

The insurgents' attacks on US occupation forces averaged 22 a day in the past week, the US military reported yesterday in Baghdad. That's an increase of several a day over the pace of some weeks earlier, and has resulted in the death of an American about every two days.

The attacks late Sunday and yesterday, against Fourth Infantry Division troops, took place in Tikrit and at locations north and east of the city, according to the US command:

At 7:45 p.m. Sunday, one division soldier was killed and another was wounded when their Bradley armored vehicle struck a mine near Beiji, 30 miles north of Tikrit.

At 11:15 a.m. yesterday, a division convoy traveling near Jalyula, in a desolate area 80 miles east of Tikrit, was ambushed with a makeshift roadside bomb and small-arms fire. One soldier was killed and two were wounded.

Two hours later, in this Tigris River city 90 miles north of Baghdad, attackers struck a Bradley vehicle on patrol with a rocket-propelled grenade, killing one soldier and wounding two others.

In another clash typical of Iraq's low-intensity conflict, 101st Airborne Division troops in the northern city of Mosul came under a rocket-propelled grenade attack last night and returned fire, killing one of their attackers, the division reported.

Four British soldiers suffered minor wounds in a roadside explosion on the outskirts of the southern city of Basra yesterday, and police reported that the Iraqi governor of Diyala Province, two bodyguards, and a bystander were wounded when the official's car drove past a roadside bomb 60 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, officials of the American-led occupation said arrests were made in connection with Sunday's bombing in the heart of Baghdad, when an explosives-packed car detonated short of its target, a hotel housing Americans and officials of Iraq's interim ruling council. The blast killed eight people, including one or two suicide bombers, and wounded dozens. No details were given on the arrests.

Six months after toppling the Ba'athist regime, the US-led coalition mostly blames pro-Hussein die-hards for the attacks, which are most intense in Tikrit and other parts of the "Sunni triangle." Hussein's Ba'ath party drew its strongest support in this Sunni Muslim-dominated region north and west of Baghdad.

Iraqis say resisters probably include others as well, men resentful of the foreign army's presence and perhaps seeking to avenge kinsmen's deaths at American hands. But the US military says the Fedayeen Saddam militia and Hussein's most loyal supporters are apparently financing and organizing the attacks.

Smith, executive officer of the Fourth Infantry Division's First Brigade, said Hussein is believed to be exerting some control over anti-US guerrilla attacks around Tikrit. If he isn't in Tikrit at the moment, he said, "at the least, he is maintaining a strong influence in the area."

He didn't elaborate on intelligence information leading the military to conclude Hussein has been in the Tikrit area, but he expressed confidence in the quality of the information. "Where else would he go to?" he said. "He has family and tribal roots here."

Some other key regime figures still at large could be in the Tikrit area, Smith said. Of the 55 Iraqis on the coalition's most wanted list, 38 are in custody, 14 are at large, and three are either dead or believed dead.

Those still free "obviously have the money to pay the average poor Iraqi to shoot at coalition forces," Smith said.

In other developments:

In Ankara, Turkey's military said that if it sent peacekeepers to Iraq, they would be deployed in the center of the country. The possible deployment is under discussion between US occupation authorities and Iraq's interim Governing Council, which in principle opposes a Turkish military presence in Iraq.

The coalition delivered crateloads of new Iraqi dinars to Baghdad banks. The new banknotes -- minus the old currency's portraits of Hussein -- will be released into nationwide circulation tomorrow.

The governing council unveiled its 2004 budget, with projected spending of $13.5 billion, almost all of which would be covered by an anticipated $12 billion in oil revenues. In addition, Iraq's plans rely heavily on $20.3 billion in the US reconstruction aid proposed by the Bush administration.

The US-led coalition said it is discussing with Amman the training of as many as 40,000 Iraqi police recruits in Jordan in the next 18 months. The Iraqi police force, rebuilt since the war, now numbers some 40,000 officers nationwide.

Iraq's Central Criminal Court convicted a ship's captain and first mate, both Ukrainians, of trying to smuggle Iraqi diesel fuel out of the country in their tanker, the Navstar.