Insurgents Under Pressure in Western Iraq

BAGHDAD —  Marines stepped up assaults Saturday on suspected rebel positions in western Iraq in an attempt to counter rural violence, which has surged during a security clampdown on the capital.

Insurgents, meanwhile, launched attacks in several Iraqi cities. Officials reported the deaths of two U.S. soldiers and at least a dozen Iraqis across the country. A hospital near the border with Syria, where one of the U.S. offensives is underway, reported that 20 Iraqis had been killed.

The two soldiers, attached to the 42nd Infantry Division, were killed along with an Iraqi civilian and a detainee Friday night in a clash with insurgents near Buhriz, north of the capital, military officials said.

Insurgents fired mortars and heavy weapons, setting a U.S. military vehicle on fire as it was crossing a bridge, provincial police said. A car bomb exploded as a unit of Iraq’s newly formed rapid-intervention police arrived, injuring five Iraqi officers.

At least one police officer was killed Saturday in Baghdad when gunmen opened fire on a patrol in the Ghazaliya neighborhood. A retired doctor was gunned down in the Sadiya neighborhood, and a roadside bomb apparently intended for a passing U.S. convoy injured two Iraqi civilians.

And late Saturday, an Interior Ministry official reported that the bodies of seven Iraqi men, all shot in the head, had been found in a shallow grave in eastern Baghdad. They were the latest of scores of remains to turn up in the last two months in and around the capital, all apparent victims of sectarian vendettas or guerrilla attacks.

Despite the violence, U.S. military officials and security experts say insurgent attacks have become less effective, especially in the capital, where car bombings and roadside bombs are down amid a U.S.-Iraqi security sweep known as Operation Lightning.

“There will be some bloody days in Baghdad, but there won’t be any bloody months,” Maj. Gen. William G. Webster, commander of U.S.-led forces in the capital, said at a news conference. Standing beside him, Iraqi Gen. Jalil Khalaf, who heads an Iraqi brigade in the capital, also said there had been progress in curbing violence.

But Webster disputed theories that insurgents had vacated the capital for guerrilla strongholds in Iraq’s so-called Sunni Triangle.

“We don’t see any evidence to lead us to believe that they’ve left here and have gone west or north,” said Webster, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division.

By some accounts, the number of attacks on U.S. forces in Baghdad has dropped 75% since the operation kicked off in late May. In some cases, insurgents have resorted to lobbing mortar rounds at bases from a distance that rarely hit their mark. Car bombings are down 50% in the capital in the last month, Webster said, adding that insurgents appeared to be running out of suicide candidates after more than 1,200 guerrilla suspects were rounded up in recent sweeps.

“The suicide drivers are not there,” Webster said. “It’s not possible to stop all of the violence all of the time, but if we reduce [it] to the level where the average Baghdadi can get on with life, and so the government can continue to form and take over running the country in a sovereign way, that would be a success.”

But one ranking military official in the capital, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said that there had been previous lulls. Eventually, he said, the mortar rounds were augmented with more lethal close-range small-arms attacks and more deadly roadside explosive devices and car bombs.

The official said he feared that insurgents were gearing up for a spectacular attack now that Iraqi and U.S. forces appeared to have gained the upper hand in the capital.

“They’re working on a big attack that shows we can’t secure Baghdad,” he said. “We’re working the intelligence very hard. But right now, we’re on the defensive.”

Attacks in the capital Saturday included a suicide car bombing that targeted an Iraqi army convoy in the working-class Bayaa neighborhood. Seven Iraqis were injured, including five civilians, according to hospital and witness accounts.

Iraqi journalist Jawad Kadhem, 39, a correspondent for Al Arabiya satellite news channel, suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the neck and torso in what appeared to be a botched kidnapping attempt Saturday outside a Baghdad restaurant where he had just had lunch, the Dubai-based channel reported.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, an Iraqi woman was killed Friday night by a roadside bomb that exploded as an Iraqi army convoy passed, officials said.

The military also announced the launch of Operation Dagger, a 1,000-troop joint offensive aimed at finding weapons and disrupting insurgent activity in the Lake Tharthar region of Al Anbar province 50 miles northwest of the capital.

Marines continued the Operation Spear offensive in the town of Karabilah near the border with Syria. Marines and Iraqi soldiers said they had discovered small weapons caches and four Iraqi hostages who had been beaten, handcuffed and chained to a wall. Hassan Salman, 30, said by telephone that American forces had raided dozens of homes.

U.S. and British warplanes also launched airstrikes on suspected insurgent hideouts in the nearby city of Qaim.

Residents of the remote desert region reported being without electricity or water for days. Dr. Hamdi Alusi, director of the Qaim hospital, said 20 people had been killed and 30 injured in fighting over the last two days.

“We could not treat them in our hospital because we have run out of medicine,” he said.

In Yousifiya, a poor town just south of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers discovered a massive weapons cache, apparently hidden by insurgents. An Army unit under Marine command destroyed dozens of rockets and artillery and mortar rounds as well as a pair of makeshift rocket launchers, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a pair of rocket warheads.

In Najaf, followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr released a letter asking him for permission to participate in upcoming city council elections. Iraqi political observers say the release of the letter is the latest indication that Sadr, whose militia once regularly engaged in running battles with U.S. troops, seeks to enter the political mainstream.

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Times staff writers Patrick McDonnell, Saif Rasheed, Shamil Aziz, Suhail Ahmad and special correspondents in Baqubah and Kirkuk contributed to this report.