Arab news
By Naseer Al-Nahr
On the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall, all hell broke loose in Iraq, with Sunni and Shiite resistance fighters battling US-led forces while continuing to hold three Japanese and several other foreign hostages.
Fierce fighting that has convulsed the Sunni cities of Fallujah and Ramadi reached the western fringe of Baghdad, where Iraqis killed nine in an attack on a US fuel convoy, and said they had seized four Italians and two Americans. At the scene of the convoy attack, a dead foreigner lay on the road bleeding from the head as an Iraqi beat him.
Teenage fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles lurked on bridges or in derelict lots near the main highway leading west toward the embattled town of Fallujah.
Iraq's US administrator Paul Bremer said US forces had unilaterally suspended operations in Fallujah at midday after a crackdown on resistance fighters to allow aid in and hold unprecedented talks with resistance fighters.
This week's bloodshed has shown how far the United States is from securing the country whose dictator it toppled on April 9, 2003. Iraqis traumatized by 35 years of Baathist rule then hoped Saddam Hussein's removal would bring them freedom and a better life.
Today they face an uncertain future after 12 months of violence that is sapping a reconstruction drive, hampering oil exports to pay for it and frightening off foreign investors.
In the past week, hundreds of Iraqis and at least 51 allied and US soldiers have been killed. A British civilian was also killed, the Foreign Office in London said on Thursday. He was working for a US security firm.
Baghdad streets were quiet yesterday as many residents feared more violence.
"America is the big devil and Britain and Blair are the lesser devils," a preacher at Baghdad's Umm Al-Qura Mosque told an angry congregation.
Reflecting a growing hostility to outsiders, one worshiper said: "When we get the order for jihad, no foreigner will be safe in Iraq."
US-led troops retook the eastern town of Kut two days after Ukrainian soldiers withdrew after clashes with Shiite fighters loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr, who launched an uprising across southern Iraq this week.
Bremer announced the Fallujah cease-fire 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 Fallujah 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.
"We are seeing the liquidation of a whole city," Governing Council member Ghazi Ajil Al-Yawar told Al-Jazeera television, saying he might resign in protest over the treatment of Fallujah. "These operations were a mass punishment for the people of Fallujah," Adnan Pachachi, one of the most pro-American members of the US-picked Governing Council, told Al-Arabiya TV. "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal."
After Friday prayers, clashes erupted in the mixed Sunni-Shiite town of Baqubah, north of Baghdad, as resistance fighters fought US troops and attacked buildings.
Shooting also broke out after a demonstration in the northern city of Mosul, witnesses said.
They said at least three Iraqis were killed in fighting around Mosul city hall and a dawn-to-dusk curfew had been imposed. Clashes in Karbala between Shiite fighters and Polish and Bulgarian troops killed 15 Iraqis.
Shiite militiamen still control the center of Najaf, where Sadr is thought to be holed up. The violence erupted as Shiite pilgrims thronged Karbala for Arbaeen, a religious occasion that climaxes this weekend.
Sunnis and Shiites prayed together in the southern city of Basra, in one of many shows of solidarity seen across Iraq.
A major international oil conference due to take place in the city later this month was cancelled due to security fears.
In Baghdad, new razor wire barriers blocked streets around Paradise 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 symbolizing 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 iconic images.
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