US troops kill 75 militants as car bombings continue

UNITED States troops claimed to have killed at least 75 militants yesterday during a bloody battle in Iraq’s most rebellious province, as insurgents in Baghdad kept up car bombings designed to undermine the country’s new government.

A suicide car bombing at a police checkpoint in southern Baghdad killed at least three people and wounded eight, police said. Another blast targeting a police patrol in south Baghdad killed two Iraqis and wounded a policeman.

A third attack on Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint near the ministry of transport wounded four people.

News of the US offensive against insurgents and foreign fighters in a desert in the western Anbar province came after a weekend of heavy losses for the Americans and with the Iraqi cabinet still incomplete three months after 30 January elections.

US marines, soldiers and sailors backed by aircraft launched the operation, a US military statement said. It did not say when the offensive started but said 75 insurgents were killed in the first 24 hours.

On Sunday, three US soldiers were killed in two roadside bomb attacks and one was killed by small-arms fire. Three US marines were killed in a suicide car bombing and a sailor died in small arms fire on Saturday, the military said.

Guerrillas have stepped up violence since the 28 April announcement of a number of government posts. At least 300 people have been killed in suicide attacks and bombings.

Iraqis thought a three-month impasse over naming a full government had ended on Sunday when the parliament approved six new ministers, but one minister turned down the job, leaving the cabinet still incomplete.

The proposed human rights minister, Hisham al-Shibli, said he had been picked purely to placate Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority and rejected the post.

Iraqi officials say insurgents regrouped while politicians spent three months bickering after the elections. The ferocity of sustained attacks over the past two weeks has fuelled frustrations with politicians who promised stability.

On a visit to the holy Shiite city of Najaf in southern Iraq, Iraq’s new interior minister, Bayan Jabor, said the authorities had captured 40 "terrorists".

Such announcements have done little to ease the anxiety of Iraqis, who braved suicide bombs to vote, hoping they would be rewarded with leaders who would tackle violence.

New ministers were sworn in yesterday for the second time, after the Kurds demanded another ceremony in which the word federalism, dropped from the original text, be included.

Kurds, who enjoy a high degree of autonomy in the north, want federalism enshrined in the constitution, due to be drafted this year.

Such sensitive issues have bogged down the country’s new leaders, who face the daunting task of fighting determined insurgents while dealing with sectarian differences.

The elections transformed the once oppressed Shiites and Kurds into the holders of power. They are trying to include Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein, in the political process in an effort to defuse the Sunni-led insurgency.

The longer it takes Iraq’s new government to crack down on guerrillas, the greater the risk that the violence will deepen tensions and spill over into civil war.

Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, said al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been weakened and isolated and there was no fear of civil war in Iraq.

In his first public statement as Iraq’s new defence minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi took a grimmer view of security. "Iraq became the crossroads for international terrorism. For that reason the government and the people of Iraq will suffer more than other countries," he said.