U.S. To Bolster Iraq Force
The top general in the Middle East has asked for troop numbers to increase by 10,000 and said U.S. troops would install former Iraqi military officers to help stiffen Iraq's security forces.
A cease-fire held in the standoff between Marines and militants in Fallujah and Shiite gunmen withdrew from southern cities, but bloodshed continued in Iraq on Tuesday. A U.S. soldier was killed and an American helicopter was reported shot down.
President Bush scheduled a rare prime-time news conference for Tuesday evening, in part to address worries raised by this month's explosion of violence and the approaching June 30 date to hand power back to Iraqis.
The news conference was scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. EDT.
The crew of the H-53 Sikorski helicopter that went down was extracted without casualties, said Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne. U.S. troops blew up the downed craft to keep it from being looted, he said.
Insurgents said they downed the craft with a rocket-propelled grenade. Byrne said the reason for the crash, before dawn, was not known.
Byrne said he was not certain how many crewmembers were on the craft, which was not part of his 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.
In other developments:
The team that secured the craft later came under mortar fire and as it withdrew was ambushed by gunmen using small weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The team suffered casualties in the mortar fire and ambush, he said but would not give details.
Another team went in afterward and blew up the craft to prevent it from being looted, he said.
The al-Mahdi army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr withdrew from Najaf, meeting a key U.S. demand. But sporadic fighting continued. Multinational forces came under mortar attack in Najaf and a U.S. soldier was killed in an attack on a convoy heading there. At least 666 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq.
The military reported Monday about 70 coalition troops and 700 Iraqi insurgents killed so far this month. It was the biggest loss of life on both sides since the end of major combat a year ago.
Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, deputy commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad, said hundreds of Iraqi fighters have been killed in the capital in the past week — apparently most in the western area.
"Full security has not been established yet in Baghdad, but it will be. It's stable now," Hertling told The Associated Press.
In Fallujah, Sunni insurgents and Marines largely held to a truce for a second day while Iraqi Governing Council members negotiated with city officials to find a way to halt the violence.
U.S. Marine commanders said insurgents were trying to smuggle weapons into the city in aid convoys and move them around in ambulances.
A hospital official said more than 600 Iraqis were killed in Fallujah alone — mostly women, children and the elderly.
Iraqis in Fallujah complained that civilians were coming under fire by U.S. snipers.
The withdrawal of al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia from police stations and government buildings in Najaf, Karbala and Kufa was a key U.S. demand. But al-Sadr followers rebuffed an American demand to disband the militia, which launched a bloody uprising in Baghdad and the south this month.
American troops were seen on the outskirts of Najaf, where the radical cleric is thought to be in his office. The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said "the mission of U.S. forces is to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr."
The son of Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, met with al-Sadr in his office Monday, telling him al-Sistani rejects any military move against al-Sadr and the holy city, a person who attended the meeting said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Al-Sistani is a moderate who has shunned anti-American violence.
U.S.-allied Iraqis were negotiating separately with representatives from Fallujah and al-Sadr. The U.S. military has moved more forces into both areas and is threatening to push into the cities if talks fall through.
Aysar al-Baghdadi, an assistant to Governing Council member Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said that in the Fallujah talks, the United States demands the surrender of the killers of four American contractors on March 31, the handover of foreign militants and an end to attacks on U.S. troops in and around the city.
The burst of violence since April 4 has exposed weaknesses in Iraq's U.S.-trained security forces. A battalion of the Iraqi army refused to fight in Fallujah, Sanchez said. And some police defected to al-Sadr's forces, Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, said.
The four-star general stressed that a large number of Iraqis have served valiantly alongside U.S. forces and many have been killed in battle.
In an effort to toughen the Iraqi forces, Abizaid said the U.S. military will reach out to former senior members of Saddam's disbanded army — a reversal in strategy. The military in the past has avoided relying on top officials from the ousted regime.
"It's … very clear that we've got to get more senior Iraqis involved — former military types involved in the security forces," he said. "In the next couple of days you'll see a large number of senior officers being appointed to key positions in the ministry of defense and the Iraqi joint staff and in Iraqi field commands."
Abizaid said he has asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to adjust the U.S. troop rotation into and out of Iraq this spring so that U.S. commanders can have the use of perhaps 10,000 more soldiers than they otherwise would have.