Market Set Ablaze: British Troops, Insurgents Mêlée in Iraq  
'Pakistan Times' Foreign Desk

BAGHDAD (Iraq): Insurgents set a fire in a vegetable market to lure British soldiers into a gun battle Sunday that left almost ten civilians dead and more than a dozen hurt by the crossfire, Iraqi police said.

The fighting was part of a string of violent incidents Sunday amid a government stalemate and threats of continued violence from insurgents after the death of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Police Capt. Hussein Karim said insurgents started the blaze in the market in south Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, to draw the troops into an ambush.

The British Defense Ministry offered a different account, saying soldiers were sent to search the suspected launch site of a rocket attack and came under small-arms fire.

The ministry said there were reports of "a small number of terrorist casualties," but full details of the incident remained unclear. It could not confirm that civilians were among the dead and wounded.

Meanwhile, Iraq's national security adviser said he believed the number of coalition forces would drop below 100,000 by year's end. Mouwafak al-Rubaie also said the majority of coalition forces would leave before mid-2008.

"The more our Iraqi security forces, our police, our army, the more they grow in number, in training and are ready and able to perform and to protect our people, then the less we need of the multinational forces," al-Rubaie told CNN's "Late Edition."

"The overwhelming majority of the multinational forces will leave probably before ... the middle of 2008."

The top U.S. commander in Iraq said Sunday he does not plant President Bush for more troops during meetings this week, but he declined to say whether he would suggest a reduction of his forces.

"I constantly evaluate the situation," Gen. George Casey said. "And if I think I need more, I'll ask more. If I think I need less, I'll tell the president that I need less."

White House officials have played down expectations of troop cutback announcements coming from the president's summit on Iraq.

Roadside bombs struck two Iraqi police patrols in separate attacks in north and south Baghdad, killing two people, at least one of them a police officer, and wounding 11.

At least nine other violent deaths were reported around the country. Al-Qaida in Iraq vowed Sunday to carry out "major attacks," insisting in a Web statement that it was still powerful after the death of al-Zarqawi.

Insurgents Saturday posted an Internet video of the beheading of three alleged Shiite death squad members.

Mass Bloodshed

The attacks since the Thursday announcement of al-Zarqawi's death have been far from the mass bloodshed promised by his supporters. The government had imposed partial driving bans in Baghdad and Baqouba, which resulted in a slight drop in violence. An average of about 19 people a day were killed around Iraq in the past three days.

Continuing an already monthlong delay, the Iraqi parliament postponed its session to allow the main political blocs more time to agree on the exact powers of the Sunni Arab parliament speaker.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met with party representatives Saturday but failed to break the deadlock.

Fellow Sunni insurgent groups sent condolences for al-Zarqawi in Internet messages Saturday and warned Sunnis not to cooperate with the Iraqi government, an apparent call for unity after U.S. forces killed the terror leader in a targeted airstrike Wednesday.

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi was the defining face of Iraq's insurgency. His tirades against the nation's majority Shiites and calls for the once-dominant minority Sunni Arabs to rise up and kill them were accompanied by the killings of thousands of Shiites in attacks.

Iraqi and U.S. leaders acknowledged that al-Zarqawi's killing was not likely to stop the insurgency, now in its fourth year. But they hoped it would rob his supporters of an iconic figure around which they rallied.

Saturday's grisly video was the first known footage of insurgent beheadings posted in months and was clearly designed to quash hopes that the Sunni-dominated insurgency might end attacks on Shiites.

In other violence Sunday:

• Drive-by gunmen fired on a civilian car, killing the driver, police said.

• Police in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora found four unidentified bodies, all of which had been tortured and shot.

• Baghdad police said they separately found the body of a Health Ministry security guard who appeared to have been shot in the head after being tortured and the corpse of a taxi driver who was reported kidnapped yesterday in Dora.

• Unidentified gunmen in Mosul shot and killed a former Iraqi Army officer, police said. The assailants were in a speeding car and killed Ali Ahmed Abdullah with a machine gun as he was walking in one of the city's commercial centers.

• A roadside bomb in western Mosul killed one bystander and injured six others, police Col. Abdul-Karim Ahmed said.

Iraq province cuts Links

An update from Amara says that a provincial council in southern Iraq suspended all cooperation with the British military

Sunday after overnight clashes between troops and Shiite militiamen left five Iraqis dead.

The violence in the Maysan provincial capital of Amara, in which a British soldier was also wounded, cast a shadow over British plans to hand over patrolling of the province to the fledgling Iraqi security forces this summer.

"We in the province of Maysan are in mourning for the shedding of the innocent blood of our martyrs and the injuring of old men, women and children by the occupation forces," the provincial council said in a statement.

It ordered a halt to all cooperation with British troops, and demanded an inquiry into the deaths and the intervention of the central government in Baghdad.

The British embassy in the Iraqi capital declined to comment, while the British military in Basra said they were unaware of the council's statement and described the situation in the city as calm.

"There have been no further attacks, and from about 9:30 am (0530 GMT) the situation in Amara has been calm," Squadron Leader Al Green said.
The governor of Maysan, Adel al-Maliki, told media that the provincial council would not meet Monday in protest at the deaths.

He said black banners would be hung on official buildings in honour of the "martyrs".●