Iraq reels from attacks

Baghdad: At least 61 people were killed and scores wounded in Iraq yesterday, while police found 54 more corpses of people killed in brutal sectarian attacks in violence-wracked Baghdad.

Iraqi security officials also reported that insurgents fired mortars into a girls school in Baghdad that injured four pupils.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk meanwhile, two car bombings killed 16 people and wounded 30, police chief Major General Torhan Yousuf told AFP.

Casualties were also reported from south of Baghdad in the Babil province where several mortar rounds killed another 10 people, a police officer said.

A US helicopter was shot down in the fighting near Najaf, security sources said.

A Reuters reporter about 1.5 km from the fighting said he heard intense gunfire and saw US helicopters firing rockets at groves sheltering militants. He saw smoke trailing from one helicopter before it came down in the midst of the fighting.

He was unable to see what had happened to the helicopter, but officers in Iraq's 8th Army Division and policemen said it had crashed and that the two crew members were dead.

Five Iraqi soldiers were killed and 19 people, including policemen, were wounded in a dawn battle in the area that pitted Iraqi and US forces against the militiamen, security sources said.

Roadside bombings killed seven more US soldiers across Iraq on Saturday as US protesters told Con-gress to cut funds for a new Baghdad security plan.

Anti-war protests

Yesterday, the military announced the deaths of three more US troops, raising its losses to 78 for the month of January.

A US Marine "died Saturday from wounds sustained due to enemy action," a statement said.

In Washington, Vietnam War protest icon Jane Fonda was among the protesters.

"I haven't spoken at an anti-war rally for 34 years," said Fonda, whose visit to Hanoi in 1972 outraged many compatriots and damaged her career as an actress.

"But silence is no longer an option," she told a cheering crowd.

The demonstration came ahead of an expected Senate vote on a non-binding resolution condemning Bush's new strategy.

The White House remained defiant however, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying that Bush "understands that Americans want to see a conclusion to the war in Iraq and the new strategy is designed to do just that."