An Iraqi Mujahideen marksman shot and killed a US soldier in the city of al-Hadithah, about 220km west of Baghdad on Friday morning, the Al Basrah reported.

Iraqi Mujahideen ambushed a US foot patrol in the Suq Maryam area of central Samarra’ in the Salah ad-Din Province on Friday morning. The attack sparked a 15-minute firefight that left three US troops dead and four more of them wounded.  One of the Mujahideen  was also killed.

Iraqi Mujahideen forces blasted the British base in the Shatt al-’Arab region in the al-Basrah Province with an intense rocket barrage.  During the night of Thursday-Friday the Resistance blasted two British positions.

Meanwhile, the US army command in occupied Iraq announced that another US soldier, who was injured on Friday during clashes in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, succumbed to his wounds on Saturday.

During Friday’s clashes, in addition to 5 US soldiers, one British occupation soldier was also killed, the IRIB reported.

KC

One of the three Palestinian factions holding a captured Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip has said it expects a solution to the crisis within days.

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) said in a statement on Saturday that the three groups had agreed to a proposal by Egyptian mediators regarding the release of corporal Gilad Shalit.

It was the first time since Shilat was captured in a cross-border raid in June that any of the factions has said that his release could happen soon.

The PRC did not give details, but said the Egyptian proposal would include the release of Palestinians held by Israel.

It added that a deal still depended on Israel. Israeli officials made no immediate comment.

Abu Mujahed, a PRC spokesman, said: “The dawn of freedom to the prisoners is about to rise and we expect a solution to our prisoners in a few days.

“We confirm to you that there is a definite move in the issue of the captured soldier.”

Optimism

The governing Hamas group said this week that it was optimistic about resolving the crisis, but did not set any time frame. The armed wing of Hamas is also among the groups that captured Shalit.

Hamas and its allies have demanded the release of up to 1,400 Palestinians, including minors and women, held by Israel in exchange for Shalit.

Last week, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel’s infrastructure minister, held talks in Cairo and afterwards expressed approval of a framework deal that Egypt had put forward, but he did not give details of the deal.

Shalit’s capture prompted Israel to send troops back into the Gaza Strip almost one year after withdrawing from the territory it had captured in the 1967 war.

More than 260 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli offensive.

AGENCIES

The US president has for the first time acknowledged a possible parallel between the raging violence in Iraq and the Vietnam War. George Bush on Wednesday was asked in an ABC News interview if he agreed with a New York Times columnist’s comparison of the strife in Iraq with the Tet Offensive, which is considered a key turning point in the US war in Vietnam.

“He could be right,” he said. “There’s certainly a stepped up level of violence.”

Bush said insurgents are trying “to inflict enough damage that we’d leave.”

“First of all, al-Qaeda is still very active in Iraq. They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they’re trying to foment sectarian violence,” he said.

“They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause (the) government to withdraw,” Bush said.

The Tet Offensive, a campaign launched by the North Vietnamese in early 1968, was considered a military defeat for them, but the scope of the assault shocked Americans and helped turn US public opinion against the war.

The White House later sought to put the comparison in context.

“The full context was that the comparison was about the propaganda waged in the Tet Offensive … and the president was reiterating something he’s said before - that the enemy is trying to shake our will,” Dana Perino, a Bush spokeswoman, said in a statement.

“They know that we’re a caring and compassionate people and that we’re deeply affected by gross violence,” she said.

“The president also believes the American people understand the importance of beating our enemy who is determined to kill innocent freedom-loving people.”

In the television interview, the US leader also expressed support for Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, but warned that his patience is not infinite.

“In my judgment, Maliki has got what it takes to lead a unity government,” Bush said.

“I’m patient. I’m not patient forever. And I’m not patient with dawdling. But I recognise the degree of difficulty of the task, and therefore, say to the American people, we won’t cut and run,” he said.

AFP

A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers west of Baghdad, the military reported Wednesday, raising the number of U.S. troops killed this month to 69.

The blast from the improvised explosive struck the soldiers’ vehicle at about 6:50 a.m. Tuesday morning, the military said in a brief statement. No other details of the attack were given and soldiers’ names were being withheld pending notification of their families.

The death toll in October is on a pace that, if it continues, would make the month the worst for occupation forces since January 2005, when 127 service members died.

AGENCIES

Four US soldiers are to face court martial in connection with the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her family in their home near Baghdad.

US military authorities said they would seek the death penalty against two of the soldiers.

A US military official said on Wednesday that: “Major-General Thomas Turner has referred charges against four soldiers to trial by general court-martial.”

The charges against the Fort Campbell soldiers involve the ape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi in her family’s home in Mahmoudiya, about 32km south of Baghdad - a case that led to international outrage and added to claims of abuse by US forces in Iraq.

The military had earlier announced that a total of eight soldiers would be court-martialed, with four others to be tried in a separate court martial on charges of murdering Iraqi detainees in northern Iraq’s northern Salahuddin province during a raid on a village.

Two of the soldiers are also accused in the rape and murders, but will not face the death penalty, the military said in a statement.

Murder counts

Another soldier who was discharged for a personality disorder and arrested in North Carolina, is to be tried in federal court in Kentucky. He has pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and four counts of murder.

Military prosecutors have said the five - all from the division’s 502nd Infantry Regiment - planned the attack from a checkpoint near the family’s home, changed their clothing to hide their identities and set the girl’s body on fire to destroy evidence.

In the other case, four are accused of murdering three Iraqi men taken from a house May 9 outside Samarra, about 96 km north of Baghdad.

AGENCIES

Twenty-two civilians have been killed in two separate southern Afghanistan offensives, officials and resident say.

Asadullah Khalid, Kandahar’s provincial governor, said Nato airstrikes in the area had left nine civilians dead and wounded 11 others on Wednesday

Nato said an operation was believed to have caused “several” civilian casualties.

The governor said the strike in Zhari district had hit three houses and that an unknown number of Taliban militants were also killed.

Nato’s international security assistance force said it regretted any civilian casualties and that it made “every effort” to minimise the risk of collateral damage during operations.

Children killed

In a separate attack on Wednesday, a rocket hit a house during a night time clash between suspected Taliban fighters and Nato and Afghan security forces in a southern Afghan village.

A resident said 13 villagers, including women and children, died.

Provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhel said at least one Taliban fighter was killed and three police wounded in Tajikai village in southern Helmand province before the rocket hit the house.

AGENCIES

According to Al Basrah, Iraqi Mujahideen reported the following military operations against the US invaders carried out during 24 hours October 14-15, 2006. The list is incomplete-

A Mujahideen bomb left three US troops dead in al-Fallujah Saturday.

Another bomb exploded by a US military patrol in al-Fallujah on Sunday afternoon, damaging a Humvee in the patrol and  flipping it over.  American troops closed off the area after the attack, making it impossible to ascertain the nature or extent of casualties.

A bomb exploded by a US patrol near the city of ‘Anah, severely damaging a Humvee. Afterwards, US troops closed off the area and let no one approach.

A US soldier was killed by a Mujahideen sharpshooter in ar-Ramadi.

A Mujahideen bomb destroyed a US Humvee, killing crew in Abu Ghurayb Sunday afternoon, killing the soldiers who were aboard it.  US forces then surrounded and deployed in the area as two helicopter gun ships flew in over the neighborhood.

A Mujahideen bomb near Samarra’ Sunday afternoon left five US troops dead.

KC

The chief of Britain’s army says that the presence of British troops in Iraq is exacerbating the security situation on the ground and they should, therefore, be withdrawn soon.

General Sir Richard Dannatt also said in an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper on Friday that Britain’s Iraq venture was aggravating the security threat elsewhere in the world.

In unusually blunt comments for a serving senior officer, Dannatt told the Friday edition of the newspaper that the troops should “get … out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems”.

Britain, Washington’s main ally in Iraq, has about 7,000 soldiers deployed, mainly in the south of the country.

The US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, then the Iraqi president, has come under heavy criticism, as the civilian death toll mounts and British and US troops are increasingly in the firing line.

Dannatt, who took over as chief of the general staff in August, said: “We are in a Muslim country and Muslims’ views of foreigners in their country are quite clear. As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren’t invited certainly by those in Iraq at the time.

“The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in. Whatever consent we may have had in the first place, may have turned to tolerance and has largely turned to intolerance. That is a fact. I don’t say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them.”

Poor planning

Putting himself directly at odds with Tony Blair, the British prime minister, and George Bush, the US president, the general criticised the post-invasion planning by the US-led forces.

“I think history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful war fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning.

“The original intention was that we put in place a liberal democracy that was an exemplar for the region, was pro-West and might have a beneficial effect on the balance within the Middle East. That was the hope, whether that was a sensible or naive hope history will judge. I don’t think we are going to do that. I think we should aim for a lower ambition.”

The ministry of defence declined to comment immediately on the general’s comments. A spokesman at Blair’s office was not immediately available to comment.

Meanwhile, in a snapshot of the daily chaos plaguing Iraq, gunmen stormed a television station in Baghdad on Thursday and shot dead 11 staff in the biggest attack yet on the media in the country.

Iraqi media organisations, funded by religious or political groups, are frequent targets for militant groups as attacks by Sunni Arab fighters and sectarian death squads continue to convulse the country, killing an estimated 100 people a day.

AGENCIES

More than 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died in violence as a result of the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, a new study says, but the US and Iraqi governments have rejected the claims.

The report published in the Lancet, a medical journal, said on Wednesday: “We estimate that as of July 2006, there have been 654,965… excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population in the study area.

“Of post-invasion deaths 601,027 …  were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire.”

The report, by a team led by Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, was later dismissed by George Bush, the US president, who said he did not consider it “credible”.

The Iraqi government also condemned the figures as “exaggerated”, with Ali Debbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, saying the figure “flies in the face of the most obvious truths”.

Statistics

The report estimated deaths in the post-invasion period from March 2003 to June 2006, and compared the mortality before the invasion, from January 2002 to January 2003.

“Gunfire remains the most common cause of death [in Iraq], although deaths from car bombing have increased”

Lancet study
They randomly selected 47 sites across Iraq, comprising 1,849 households and 12,801 people.

Interviewers asked householders about births, deaths and  migration and if there had been a death since January 2002 and, if so, asked to see a death certificate to note the cause.

Of the 629 deaths recorded, 547, or 87%, were in the post-invasion period.

This sample was used to extrapolate that, across the country, 654,965 deaths - amounting to 2.5 per cent of the population - have occurred since March 2003.

Violent deaths

About 601,000 of the deaths were due to violence, of which about half were due to gunfire. The study also estimated that 31% of deaths were as a result of action by the US-led forces.

“The number of people dying in Iraq has continued to escalate,” the report concluded.

“The proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006, although the actual numbers have increased every year.

“Gunfire remains the most common cause of death, although death from car bombing have increased.”

‘Out of control’

The Lancet’s new study follows a previous October 2004 study which said that 100,000 deaths had occurred in the country between March 2003 and September 2004 as a result of violence, heart attacks and aggravated health problems.

It also comes as Jan Egeland, the United Nations undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, said that revenge killings in Iraq were “totally out of control”.

Egeland said that a “very worrying” deterioration in conditions had led to more than 315,000 Iraqi civilians being displaced, while women were increasingly being attacked in so-called “honour” killings.

However, some attacked the timing of the new report’s release as political, coming only three weeks before the US midterm elections.

“They’re almost certainly way too high,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, of the figures.

“This is not analysis, this is politics.”

AGENCIES

Demonstrators angered over a satirical video of the Prophet Muhammad, which was broadcast on Danish TV, have hurled firebombs and rocks at the Danish embassy in Tehran.

Anti-riot police kept protesters from entering the embassy on Tuesday evening, but this did not prevent demonstrators from throwing Molotov cocktails over the wall and into the garden.

There were no clashes or arrests, and the extent of any damage  was not immediately known.The demonstrators were demanding the closure of the mission.

Excerpts of the video, which was originally published on the internet, was broadcast on Denmark’s TV2 channel and showed members of the extreme-right Danish People’s Party portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a beer-drinking camel and a drunken “terrorist” attacking Copenhagen.

The video was filmed by a member of the party’s youth wing, Martin Rosengaard Knudsen, also a member of the artists’ group called Defending Denmark.

The group removed the video clip from its website on Monday, saying it was glad it had sparked debate.

Danish embassies and commercial interests in Muslim countries were hit by a wave of violent protests in January and February this year after satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed were published in a Danish daily, Jyllands Posten, in September 2005.

AGENCIES