Rebels Attack Baghdad Police, Troops

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The Aadhamiya attack followed a raid by the Iraqi National Guard on the nearby Abu Hanifa mosque, a revered shrine for the once dominant Sunni minority, at the end of Friday prayers. It enraged worshippers and triggered clashes that left four dead.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, the secular Shi'ite who heads the U.S.-backed government, blamed Friday's bloodshed on "terrorists" in the mosque. The government says it will quell the Sunni insurgency before an election in January.

Violence threatens the election date. But an enthusiastic response from political parties wanting to register to take part caused the deadline to be pushed back by two days from Saturday. Some 145 applications had been received, overloading the clerks.
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... the capital witnessed one of its most unsettled days for a while, as U.S. tanks and helicopters helped beat off the rocket-firing rebels during a three-hour battle in Aadhamiya.

The U.S. soldier was killed and nine wounded when a patrol was caught in an ambush in Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

In the city's western Amriya district, gunmen in cars opened fire on a National Guard unit. A Guard at the scene said seven of the assailants were killed and seven passers-by wounde

the capital witnessed one of its most unsettled days for a while, as U.S. tanks and helicopters helped beat off the rocket-firing rebels during a three-hour battle in Aadhamiya.

The U.S. soldier was killed and nine wounded when a patrol was caught in an ambush in Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

In the city's western Amriya district, gunmen in cars opened fire on a National Guard unit. A Guard at the scene said seven of the assailants were killed and seven passers-by wounde

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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Baghdad exploded in violence Saturday, as insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol and a police station, assassinated four government employees and detonated several bombs. One American soldier was killed and nine were wounded during clashes that also left three Iraqi troops and a police officer dead.

Some of the heaviest violence came in Azamiyah, a largely Sunni Arab district of Baghdad where a day earlier U.S. troops raided the capital's main Sunni mosque. Shops were in flames, and a U.S. Humvee burned, with the body of what appeared to be its driver inside.

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Smoke rose from burning shops along a commercial street. U.S. helicopters circled overhead and ambulances were driving to the scene of the clashes.

In western Baghdad, heavy fighting broke out Saturday between gunmen and Iraqi National Guards and American troops in the Amiriyah neighborhood, where three National Guardsmen were killed by roadside bombs, said policeman Akram al-Azzawi.

Nearby, a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. patrol passed in the Khadra area, wounding two U.S. troops, according to policeman Ali Hussein of the Khadra police station. The U.S. military had no immediate confirmation.

In downtown Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle just after noon at an intersection on Saadoun Street, a bustling commercial street. One Iraqi civilian was killed and another wounded in the blast, which sent black smoke rising above the city center and set several cars ablaze.

And in the western part of the city, gunmen in a car chased down a vehicle carrying employees of the Ministry of Public Works on their way to work Saturday, opened fire and killed four of them, a ministry spokesman said. Amal Abdul-Hameed an adviser to the ministry in charge of urban planning and three employees from her office were killed, said spokesman Jassim Mohammed Salim.

The spasm of violence came a day after Iraqi forces backed by U.S. soldiers raided the Abu Hanifa mosque one of the country's most important Sunni mosques as worshippers were leaving after Friday prayers in the Azamiyah neighborhood.

The operation appeared to be part of a government crackdown on militant clerics opposed to the U.S.-led attack on Fallujah. Witnesses said at least three people were killed and 40 others arrested.

Congregants at the Abu Hanifa mosque said they heard explosions inside the building, apparently from stun grenades. Later, a reporter saw a computer and books, including a Quran, scattered on the floor of the imam's office near overturned furniture. U.S. soldiers were seen inside the mosque compound.

U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an offensive that they say has secured most of Fallujah, hoping to tame the insurgents' strongest bastion ahead of January elections. But many militants are believed to have fled the city to continue attacks elsewhere and the operation risks alienating Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, whose participation in elections is seen as key to legitimacy.

Insurgents have carried out a wave of violence across Iraq coinciding with the Fallujah offensive. Mosul Iraq's third-largest city with more than a million residents about 225 miles north of Baghdad has been a center of violence.

Officials were trying to identify the four decapitated bodies found Thursday in the city, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia.

An extremist group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, said in a Web statement Saturday that it kidnapped and killed two members of a Kurdish political group in Mosul. It posted a video showing two men being shot. The men wore robes bearing the initials of their group, the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.

On Friday, a statement posted on an Islamist Web site in the name of Jordanian terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group said it had "slaughtered" two Iraqi National Guard officers "in the presence of a big crowd" in Mosul. The claim included no photos or video and could not be verified.

There was no way of knowing immediately whether the decapitated bodies were connected to either claim.

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