Pentagon: 400 Hits Weekly In Iraq

Pace Of Insurgent Attacks Now Approaching Last Year's Danger Levels

(CBS/AP)  The Pentagon says the pace of insurgent attacks in Iraq in recent weeks is approaching last year's levels.

Officials say there have been about 400 attacks a week of all kinds after a post-election lull: bombings, shootings, rocket and mortar attacks. About half cause significant damage or injure or kill someone.

After months of haggling over the makeup of Iraq's post-Saddam Hussein government, Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari has completed a draft list of Cabinet ministers that he is submitting to the president, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Lawmakers said that under the proposal, Shiites would get the majority of the 32 ministries, with the others distributed among Kurdish, Sunni and Christian factions. Three deputy premiers are also proposed — one each from the majority Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Air Force General Richard Myers — chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dispute that the increase in violent attacks represents a lack of progress.

A defense official says about 60 people — including Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners — are injured or killed daily in attacks.

In Other Developments:

Iraqi militants threatening to kill three Romanian journalists and an American hostage issued a new video, extending the deadline until Wednesday for Romania to withdraw its troops, Al Jazeera television said. The militants said in the Tuesday video they would begin killing the hostages at 6 p.m. the next day unless their demands were met, the network reported. Two of the hostages, Romanian Sorin Miscoci and Iraqi American Mohammed Monaf, were seen in the video wearing orange jumpsuits — which kidnappers in the past have put on their hostages when they kill them.

More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, and at least 17 are believed to still be in captivity. More than 30 were killed by their kidnappers.

A senior U.S. military official in Washington said U.S. forces believe they just missed capturing Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a Feb. 20 raid that netted two of his associates. The official, who discussed the operation on condition of anonymity, could provide no details on how al-Zarqawi escaped. He also said U.S. troops recovered a computer belonging to al-Zarqawi, but did not say how.

Insurgents fired five mortar shells Tuesday at a U.S. base in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. Maj. Richard Goldenberg said American forces did not return fire and suffered no casualties. Police said a shell that hit outside the base wounded an Iraqi civilian. The U.S. command said that American troops and their Iraqi allies had struck back at the insurgents this week, staging a series of raids across the country that netted more than 130 suspected extremists and several big caches of weapons.

Charles Duelfer, the CIA's top weapons hunter in Iraq, said in his final report that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "has been exhausted" without finding any. U.S. and British warnings about Saddam Hussein's alleged WMDs had been a main argument for the coalition's invasion of Iraq more than two years ago.

A senior U.S. defense official said an American inquiry into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad is expected to conclude that U.S. soldiers generally followed standing instructions when they fired on a car he was in. But the investigation into the March 4 shooting, when the officer was guarding an Italian journalist leaving Iraq after she was freed as a hostage, is expected to raise questions about the rules of engagement at the checkpoint where the shooting occurred, the official said.

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©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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