IRAQ: Tearful US troops mourned a murdered comrade in Baghdad yesterday just hours after a grenade attack set two vehicles on fire in the latest assault on US forces struggling to control postwar Iraq.
About 100 soldiers turned out for the memorial service for Pte Shawn Pahnke, of the 1st Armoured Division, who was shot in the back by a sniper on Monday.
The coalition forces who toppled Saddam Hussein on April 9th have failed to find him or his alleged weapons of mass destruction, but US intelligence analysts believe the the missing dictator is more likely to be alive than dead, the New York Times reported.
Mr Paul Bremer, Iraq's US ruler, says that Saddam loyalists are attacking US troops to destabilise the country.
Casualties have mounted on both sides in the uneven conflict between US combat troops and hit-and-run Iraqi fighters.
"Get down on the ground now" screamed a soldier patrolling the darkened streets of Baghdad on Thursday night as he manacled a taxi-driver found with an unlicensed gun in his car. The US troops were enforcing a curfew which starts at 11 p.m. and lasts until dawn prayers at about 4.30 a.m.
A young preacher at a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad's teeming Sadr City township denounced the US occupiers but told his congregation of about 15,000 worshippers to stand up for their rights without resorting to violence.
The cleric urged the congregation to gather today outside the US military headquarters in Baghdad for a rally to demand a unified Iraq ruled by its own people.
In an attack on US troops on Wednesday night, assailants with grenades set two vehicles on fire in the restive town of Falluja, residents said yesterday. US soldiers fired back indiscriminately, they said. "They were hitting houses and cars," said one man.
The New York Times quoted military officials as saying that the hunt for Saddam had intensified under the leadership of a secret US military group known as "Task Force 20".
The renewed belief that Saddam had survived the war stemmed from intercepted discussions between members of the Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary unit and of Saddam's intelligence service, it quoted the unnamed officials as saying. - (Reuters)