U.S. troops press on to crush Iraqi resistance

U.S. forces in Iraq pressed yesterday with attempts to crush resistance to their occupation of the country. According to U.S. and Iraqi sources, 'Operation Peninsula Strike' in northern Iraq has left at least 113 dead in a week.

U.S. forces killed 82 combatants at a desert training camp at Sahl, near the border with Syria, an Imam from a neighbouring village said yesterday.

"In total 82 people died in the camp," including at least one non-Iraqi, said Sheikh Gharbi Abdul Aziz, imam of the main mosque at Rawa, a few kilometres from Sahl.

He said he had taken part in the burial of the 82 bodies after fighting erupted Thursday at dawn at the suspected terrorist training camp.

The U.S. military reported killing 27 Iraqis after clashes broke out late Thursday when an armoured patrol attached to the U.S. 4th Infantry Division came under rocket propelled grenade attack near Balad, about 80km northeast of Baghdad.

U.S. forces would continue the operation launched Thursday night "until we have restored peace and prosperity to the people of Iraq," Major Daniel Barnett said at a camp near Dhuluiya, 60km north of Baghdad.

Fighting was concentrated in areas north of Baghdad, where many people still express sympathy for the regime of Saddam Hussain, which was ousted by U.S.-led coalition forces in April.

The U.S. military said yesterday it was interrogating 74 people detained in a raid in northern Iraq to determine whether they were active members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida network.

"Initial indications are that they are Al Qaida sympathisers," a U.S. army spokesman said. "What we're trying to do is validate that through the interrogation process."

Asked whether the group had been actively planning attacks on U.S. forces, or just sympathised with bin Laden's anti-American ideology, the spokesman said: "An Al Qaida sympathiser is somebody who would do the coalition and the country of Iraq harm, and frankly the whole world harm."

The army said the suspected Al Qaida members were captured in a raid on Thursday near the northern city of Kirkuk. It would not say whether they were Iraqis or foreigners.

In Hilla, U.S. overseer Paul Bremer vowed to put a stop to meddling by Iraq's neighbours as he launched the first of a series of meetings aimed at engaging moderate traditional leaders in the Iranian-influenced Shiite Muslim south.

Bremer did not identify which countries he was referring to and said there was more than one.

But the venue of his comments, in the Shiite heartland of south-central Iraq, suggested he was referring primarily to neighbouring Iran whose influence over the main Shiite political factions here Washington bitterly opposes.

"We are aware of interference in Iraq by some of its neighbours," Bremer told an audience of around a dozen leading tribal sheikhs in this provincial capital 100km south of Baghdad.

"I believe it is not in the interests of the Iraqi people. You can be sure that I take very seriously the authority that the president has given to me to make sure that it stops."

Meanwhile, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi warned Washington that it is making a mistake by refusing to give Iraqis more authority over their own country.

Chalabi told the Washington Post in an interview published yesterday that the decision to limit Iraqi influence could spark increased opposition to the U.S.-led occupation.

He criticised the White House decision not to grant immediate responsibilities to Iraqis or allow them to choose members of a council designed to advise the occupation authorities, according to the report.

"We have to open up an Iraqi political process immediately," Chalabi said.

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