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Market in Iraq- Iraqis killed
Posted by Alexandros (Guest) - Saturday, October 25 2003, 22:55:26 (EDT)
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Website: http://metimes.com/2K3/issue2003-43/issue_metpix/one_iraqi_killed.jpg
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US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a driving force behind America's presence in Iraq, was starting a four-day tour of the strife-torn country Friday as attacks cost the lives of a US soldier and an Iraqi civilian.

The hawkish Wolfowitz's visit comes as US commanders warn they are facing a tougher fight on the ground and the US-sponsored interim Governing Council demands greater power from the coalition.

US officials were not releasing details of Wolfowitz's trip, his second to the country.

On the ground, a US soldier was shot dead early Friday guarding a grain silo in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, raising to 106 the number of US troops killed since major hostilities were declared over on May 1.

Hours earlier, unknown assailants shelled a marketplace in Baghdad, killing a handicapped cigarette seller and wounding six others, in the latest assault on civilians by those hoping to evict America from Iraq.

"The act was carried out by people who don't want security or stability." Iraqi police Colonel Abbas Nasser Hussein said.

"There was no military base, police station, or government building in the neighorhood," Hussein said, adding he thought the shells were 60-millimeter mortars, although police experts identified them as Katyusha rockets.

The market was only 30 meters (yards) from where a bomb was discovered just hours earlier hidden next to a school, he said.

Since August, there have been several attacks, mainly car bombings, claiming the lives of UN officials, Iraqi religious leaders, policemen and scores of innocent bystanders across Iraq.

The four-month-old battle between guerrillas and US forces raged on north and west of the capital, home to the bedrock of Saddam Hussein supporters.

Two Iraqi fighters were shot dead near the northern town of Baquba by US forces early Friday after they fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at a military convoy, police officers told AFP.

In Fallujah, more than 100 people stoned police blocking them from ransacking the US-backed mayor's offices, following a prayer service attended by thousands angered by the detention of a prominent Muslim cleric.

Earlier, two US soldiers were wounded in a bomb blast that damaged one of the vehicles traveling in a convoy through Fallujah, west of the capital, witnesses said.

US forces arrested four Iraqis following the explosion, they added.

Kurdish security personnel in Iraq's northern oil center of Kirkuk on Thursday detained a suspected bomber of Ansar al-Islam, a group linked by Washington to the al-Qaeda terror network, an official said.

Razkar Ahmad was arrested by militiamen of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) on suspicion of trying to plant explosives in a building housing several Kurdish associations in a residential area, PUK official Jala Jawhar told AFP.

In recent weeks, coalition officials have spoken increasingly of the threat posed by Ansar al-Islam and its al-Qaeda backers.

Already burdened by Saddam loyalists and Ansar, the Americans also continued to face a challenge from Iraqi Shiite fundamentalist cleric Moqtada Sadr.

The young firebrand accused America on Friday of waging war on him and fomenting civil strife in the city of Karbala, where his supporters clashed with a rival cleric's followers a week ago.

Sadr said at Muslim weekly prayers in Kufah, south of Baghdad, that the US forces were blaming him for the clashes between his militia, the Mehdi army, and the followers of top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

"The Americans have used this division to make a war on me and discredit the Medhi army, especially since I declared a new government which does not make any difference between any group," Sadr told worshippers.

The endemic violence poses a severe threat to the US-led reconstruction effort, even as international donors made billions of dollars worth of pledges at a conference in Madrid.



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