Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Forces step up fight in north Iraq

U.S. forces widened their operations against insurgents in northern Iraq on Tuesday, launching an attack on the Euphrates River stronghold of Haditha only days after evicting militants from Tal Afar. Residents also reported American air strikes in the same region near Qaim.

Americans called in bombing raids in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of the capital. They captured one militant with ties to al-Qaida in Iraq and killed four others.

In the volatile city of Qaim, about 80 miles northwest of Haditha, residents said clashes broke out between insurgents and coalition forces. The U.S. military did not confirm the air strike.

In the south, a roadside bomb killed four people near Basra - an attack that was a twin to a deadly bombing in the area last week. Iraqi police said the dead were four American contract workers, but U.S. officials were unable to confirm the nationalities of the victims. Last Wednesday, a roadside bomb near Basra hit a passing convoy of U.S. diplomatic security guards, killing four Americans.

President Jalal Talabani, meanwhile, said in Washington that Iraq would not set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, declaring at a news conference with President Bush that the American force still was needed. The Bush administration is under increasing pressure at home to set a date to begin pulling out the 140,000 U.S. troops.

"We will set no timetable for withdrawal. A timetable will help the terrorists," Talabani said. He said he hoped Iraqi security forces could take responsibility for the country by the end of 2006.

A U.S. Army commander said Tuesday that extremist fighters battling for control of Tal Afar in northern Iraq had committed atrocities against civilians.

"The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine - in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents; beheadings and so forth," Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, said in an interview from Tal Afar with reporters at the Pentagon.

McMaster said Tal Afar is not yet under the control of the 5,000 Iraqi government forces and 3,500 to 3,800 U.S. troops that have been fighting together there for the past two weeks. Tal Afar lies about 50 miles from the Syrian border.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, speaking in Washington, said Syria was playing a "dangerous game" in allowing insurgents to penetrate Iraq.

"Don't think you can benefit from our difficulties. It may be for the short term, but for the long term it might backfire on you," he warned Iraq's neighbor to the West.

Bush also renewed criticism of Syria, accusing it of doing too little to control the flow of fighters across the border.

"The Syrian leader must understand we take his lack of action seriously," he said. "The government is going to be more and more isolated."

Syrian officials deny they offer sanctuary to insurgents.

Elsewhere ...

NEW DRAFT: Former Iraqi leaders said Tuesday that they had approved a final, modified version of the new constitution, clearing the way for 5-million copies to be printed and distributed to Iraqi citizens before next month's national referendum. The approval came more than two weeks after the draft was formally presented to parliament over the objections of some lawmakers. The revisions are relatively minor, and are not likely to win the support of Sunni Arab leaders who oppose the charter and had hoped to see broader changes on regional autonomy and other issues. But in a measure of the chaos that has surrounded the process, some committee members said Tuesday afternoon that they were not aware a draft had been agreed on. f,8,ub0 nformation from the New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified September 14, 2005, 02:15:34]