As violence flares, Iraq to enact emergency law

BAGHDAD -- Seven US Marines were killed in fighting over the last two days, and hospital officials said a car bomb killed 14 people in the Sunni triangle town of Khalis northeast of Baghdad yesterday, shattering a spell of comparative calm since sovereignty was handed to Iraqis nine days ago.

Four Marines were killed yesterday, and three on Monday. Marine officials did not disclose further details. The suicide bomb in Khalis ripped through a funeral for victims of a previous insurgent attack on Sunday and killed 14 people, according to an Associated Press report.

The deaths topped a wave of attacks that, taken together, suggest that the insurgency has not lost strength since Iraqi politicians officially took over from American occupation officials on June 28.

In another development, family members of US Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun said in Lebanon that he had been released by a group that had been holding him hostage. A claim this weekend that he had been beheaded was later denied. Still, neither the family nor the US military had had any direct contact with Hassoun, who was apparently abducted after wandering off his base in Iraq.

The surge in violence set the stage for a planned announcement today, by the interim Iraqi government, of a new national emergency law. Iraqi officials and US military commanders held days of intense discussions on the practical enforcement of martial law in a nation where 160,000 foreign troops still provide security.

"We won't be pleased until we have the situation under control," said a senior military official who briefed reporters yesterday on condition of anonymity.

Attacks against international forces in Iraq remained steady at 40 to 45 a day, the official said, with no drop since the transfer of sovereignty. This month, fighting has killed 14 American military personnel.

Across Iraq, from Baghdad to the Sunni heartland to the southern city of Basra, violence flared anew. In the capital, a US soldier killed a 4-year-old Iraqi boy at a downtown checkpoint late Monday night in the first such shooting since the transfer of power.

Some Iraqi officials have argued that US forces should pull out of Iraqi cities to avoid episodes like the checkpoint shooting, which have been relatively commonplace and which cause extreme friction between US troops and the Iraqi public.

A roadside bomb in Basra, apparently targeting a British convoy, killed one civilian, the Associated Press reported. In Latifiyah, just south of Baghdad, gunmen ambushed police and injured two.

Nearby, unknown assailants attacked a group of tribal leaders who had volunteered to protect electric lines from looters. A security company working for the Iraqi government had purchased several new trucks for an auxiliary force to police power lines, which are subject to frequent vandalism. But as the trucks were being delivered to an area south of Baghdad, gunmen attacked them, killing one man, critically injuring another and kidnapping two more along with one of the trucks, tribal leaders said.

Meanwhile, in a bizarre twist on recent videos released by groups that killed or claimed to have killed hostages, a group of self-styled vigilantes appeared in a video on the Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite network and threatened to kill terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if he didn't leave Iraq.

Members of the group, calling themselves the "Salvation Movement," wore hoods and brandished guns in the same style as the terrorist groups who have appeared in videos beheading Western hostages or making threats against Iraqi leaders.

"The apostate, criminal Zarqawi and his henchmen must leave Iraq immediately," a masked gunman said in the videotaped statement. "Islam has nothing to do with this criminal."

The senior military official, commenting on the video, said that militias were banned, but that, "I would refer them to the nearest recruiting station."

In recent weeks, the Iraqi government has sought to make a distinction between resistance fighters who attack only occupation troops and those who target Iraqi civilians. It plans to offer an amnesty tomorrow to resistance fighters who have not killed Iraqis.

But followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shi'ite militia leader who sparked uprisings around Iraq in April, scoffed at the amnesty, saying the US-appointed Iraqi government had no right to pardon people who had been "honorably" fighting for their country.

"What is there to forgive?" asked Sheik Abdelkarim al-Daraji, a Sadr spokesman.

Anger lingers over the presence of US troops in cities, particularly after violence like Monday's checkpoint shooting.

Soldiers fired on a car after it ran a checkpoint at 10:30 p.m. According to the senior military official, the man driving the car claimed his brakes failed, but soldiers tested the car and found them to be in working order.

The official also said the driver turned off the lights and ignored warnings to stop, passing a stationary car and forcing soldiers out of the way.

The driver's 4-year-old son was killed and his older sister wounded in the shooting, which the official said was under investigation. The father was questioned and released, the official said.

"It is a tragic situation whenever you lose children who are obviously not combatants," the senior military official said. "It's not a good night for those soldiers."

The shooting occurred outside a community center where soldiers had set up a checkpoint about 15 minutes before, according to soldiers investigating the scene yesterday. At nearby Yarmouk Hospital, the girl, who is about 10 years old, was treated for a hand wound, telling doctors that her father could not stop the car because of the brake problem.

"She said, 'The Americans shot my brother,' " said Dr. Firas Ghanim, an emergency room resident who treated her. "We tried to comfort her, but she could not forget."

Across the hospital courtyard, Sheik Sadoon al-Qassimi waited in the surgical ward as Ghanim got ready to operate on the man critically wounded in the shooting of the electricity guards.

Qassimi, of the Central Council of Iraqi Tribal Sheiks, had persuaded local leaders to help guard high-tension electric lines stretching 33 miles south from Baghdad. But the attack occurred on the very first day of the project -- as tribal leaders and security contractors delivered the trucks to the guard force.

"We want to protect our country," Qassimi said as he stood in a hospital ward, waiting for the wounded man to undergo surgery. "We are ready to give up our lives."