US steps up the offensive against Iraq insurgents

BAGHDAD -- US forces ramped up offensives countrywide yesterday in anticipation of an onslaught of insurgent attacks on Iraqis voting in next week's constitutional referendum.

In Baghdad and Basra, meanwhile, accusations of extrajudicial killings mounted against Iraq's new Western-trained, largely Shi'ite Muslim police force.

About 3,500 US and Iraqi troops were conducting at least two military operations -- one in the far west near the Syrian border and one in north-central Iraq -- aimed at disrupting strongholds and supply lines of Iraq's Sunni Muslim-led insurgency.

The US military said a third assault in the west concluded late yesterday with 50 insurgents killed in the weeklong offensive, launched Oct. 1 in towns near the Syrian border.

Military operations are expected to continue through Oct. 15, when Iraqis are to vote on a draft constitution that would allow the country to be remade into a loose federation with a weak central government heavily influenced by religious law. Iraq's newly empowered Shi'ite majority and Kurds back the draft, while many Sunni Arabs strongly oppose it.

The insurgency is as strong in the west as anywhere in the country, with foreign and Iraqi guerrillas using Euphrates River towns to funnel recruits, weapons, and money from Syria into Iraq. On Thursday, a bomb placed on a road near the border town of Qaim killed two Marines; they had been on a logistics patrol, according to Major General Stephen T. Johnson, the commander of western forces.

Another roadside bomb Thursday blew up a US Humvee near Karmah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, killing four Marines, Johnson told reporters in a video news conference.

The deaths brought to 1,950 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni leader who took part in negotiations for the new constitution, urged the United States and insurgents to stop fighting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began this week. The two sides should join in direct talks afterward, Mutlak said. It was not clear whether his statement represented the view of any insurgent faction.

In Basra, British troops arrested an unspecified number of Iraqi police accused of involvement in planting roadside bombs that killed at least 14 Americans, Britons, and others in recent months. The arrests reflected growing tensions between local Shi'ites and Western-led forces in the once-calm south.

British officials said yesterday that their investigations into bombings this summer led Thursday to the arrests of 12 people, including Shi'ite militia fighters and members of Basra's mostly Shi'ite police force. ''It is very concerning to us that members of Basra police are involved in terrorism," Brigadier John Lorimer, the local British commander, said in a statement. ''Nobody who has been involved in murdering MNF soldiers should be allowed to hide behind their uniform," Lorimer added, using the inititals for Multi-National Force.

Situated in the Shi'ite-dominated south, Basra has experienced comparatively few attacks by the Sunni-led insurgency. However, residents and others there have alleged that the police forces are infiltrated by former Shi'ite militia members and used by political leaders for extrajudicial killings and torture.

In Baghdad, Sunnis mourned 22 men who family members said had been taken from their homes, tortured, and killed by men wearing the uniforms of Iraq's elite Interior Ministry commandos.

In the Sunni mosque where the bodies were taken before burial, angry relatives chanted, ''God is great! God is great!" around the pine coffins draped in Iraqi flags. The men, 21 Sunnis and one Shi'ite, had been taken from their homes in August, relatives said.

Material from the Associated Press was also used in this report.