Attacks and "Invaded War"

U.S. Increases Efforts to Put Down Sunni and Shiite Combatants
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: April 7, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 7 - The Iraqi uprising against the American-led occupation intensified Wednesday and spread to new parts of the country, with United States forces increasing their efforts to put down Sunni and Shiite combatants.

Pentagon officials in Washington signaled that they would probably delay bringing home some 25,000 troops as scheduled and probably move reinforcements to the south.

``We're facing a test of will, and we will meet that test,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said, adding that the plan to postpone the troop return was part of a plan ``to systematically address the situations we are facing.''

In Falluja in the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad, where the most pitched battles occurred, hospital officials said several dozen people were killed after Americans fired rockets at a mosque compound. American officials said firing had come from the mosque, forcing them to retaliate. The mosque itself remained largely intact.

In the south, where the majority Shiites predominate, followers of a rebel cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, took over several towns, including Kut, where Ukrainian troops withdrew under pressure. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry in Kiev reported the pullout, which in effect ceded control of the city to Mr. Sadr's supporters.

The resistance even spread north of Baghdad to Hawija. American troops fired on a crowd protesting the attacks in Falluja. About eight Iraqis were reported killed.

The intensification of the combat is sapping efforts to lay the foundations for a largely ceremonial transfer of political sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30.

An official in the occupation authority said Wednesday that allied and Iraqi security forces had lost control of the key southern cities of Najaf and Kufa to the Shiite militia, conceding that months of effort to win over the population with civil projects and promises of jobs have failed with segments of the population.

``Six months of work is completely gone,'' the official said. ``There is nothing to show for it.''

He cited reports that government buildings, police stations, civil defense garrisons and other installations built up by the Americans had been overrun and then stripped bare, of files, furnishings and even toilet fixtures.

For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago, the Americans found themselves fighting intensely against two main segments of the population, using warplanes, attack helicopters and armored units against the groups the United States had said it came to liberate when it invaded war in March last year.

In a further indication of widening opposition to the allies' presence, Bulgaria has asked the United States to send troops to reinforce its 450-member battalion in Karbala.

In Falluja, the Marines said they had waged a six-hour battle around the Abdel-Aziz al-Samarri mosque before calling in a Cobra helicopter, which fired a missile. An F-16 dropped a laser-guided bomb, Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said.

Elsewhere in Falluja, American forces seized a second place of prayer, the Muadidi mosque, according to The Associated Press. A marine climbed the minaret and fired on guerrilla gunmen, witnesses told the agency. Insurgents fired back, hitting the minaret with rocket-propelled grenades and causing it to partly collapse, the A.P. added

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, said the Marines did not attack the mosque until it became clear that enemy fighters were inside and using it to cover their attacks.

He told CNN that under the Geneva Convention, the mosque was protected but that once attacks originated from it, its protected status was moot.

Insurgent bands of fighters appear to be united in a way that is more concurrent than coordinated, more opportunistic than driven by an operational decision to merge forces.

The most likely explanation for the coincident eruptions of violence, many Iraqis believe, is that Sunnis and Shiites are each watching the other's assaults, first in Falluja last week and then in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, Kufa, Najaf and at least three other southern cities over the weekend, sensing that the American forces were overstretched.