Iraq in turmoil on anniversary of Saddam’s fall

Bloody turmoil reigned in Iraq on Friday, the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s fall, with Sunni and Shi’ite rebels battling U...

Bloody turmoil reigned in Iraq on Friday, the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s fall, with Sunni and Shi’ite rebels battling US-led forces and holding three Japanese and several other foreign hostages.

Fierce fighting that has convulsed the Sunni cities of Falluja and Ramadi reached the western fringe of Baghdad, where insurgents killed nine in an attack on a US fuel convoy, and said they had seized four Italians and two Americans.

A Reuters journalist saw two captive foreigners in a mosque in a village in the Abu Ghraib district. One was wounded in the shoulder. At the scene of the convoy attack, a dead foreigner lay on the road with a bloody head as an Iraqi beat him. Teenage fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles lurked on bridges. Iraq’s US Administrator Paul Bremer said US Forces had unilaterally suspended operations in Falluja at midday after a crackdown on guerrillas to allow aid in and what would be unprecedented talks with insurgents.

This week’s bloodshed, engulfing the hitherto quiescent Shi’ite south as well as the bastions of Sunni insurgency in central Iraq, has shown how far the US is from securing the country whose dictator it toppled on April 9, 2003.

In the past week, at least 51 US and allied soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in fighting. A British civilian was also killed in Iraq, the foreign office in London said on Thursday. He was working for a US security firm. Baghdad streets were quiet on Friday as many residents feared more violence. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the situation was the most serious yet faced by US-led occupation forces. ‘‘The lid of the pressure cooker has come off,’’ he told BBC radio.

US-led troops retook the eastern town of Kut two days after Ukrainian soldiers withdrew after clashes with Shi’ite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who launched an uprising across southern Iraq this week. Bremer announced the Falluja ceasefire after five days of street fighting. The director of the main hospital said 450 Iraqis had been killed and 1,000 wounded in the city this week.

Marines launched ‘‘Operation Iron Resolve’’ in Falluja after last week’s killing and mutilation of four US Security guards. The ferocity of the crackdown has angered Iraqi politicians working with Bremer’s administration.

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Clashes erupted after Friday prayers in the mixed Sunni-Shi’ite town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, as insurgents fought US troops and attacked buildings.

Shooting also broke out after a demonstration in the northern city of Mosul. At least three Iraqis were killed in fighting around Mosul city hall and a dawn-to-dusk curfew had been imposed. Clashes in the shrine city of Kerbala between Shi’ite fighters and Polish and Bulgarian troops killed 15 Iraqis. Sunnis and Shi’ites prayed together in the southern city of Basra, in one of many shows of solidarity.

In Baghdad, new razor wire barriers blocked streets around Firdaws Square where US Marines and Iraqis dragged down Saddam’s statue a year ago. Loudspeaker messages warned the public to stay away. The measures appeared designed to foil possible anniversary protests against the US-led occupation. Posters of Sadr fluttered on a green sculpture symbolising a new Iraq erected on the plinth where Saddam’s statue once stood. A US soldier later climbed a ladder to pull down the Sadr pictures in an eerie echo of last year’s images. —(Reuters)