BAGHDAD, May 16: Despite the persistent violence, President George W. Bush vowed that US troops would stay on in Iraq after the end of the occupation.
"The vital mission of our military in helping to provide security will continue on July 1 and beyond," he told Americans in his weekly radio address.
Meanwhile, militiamen clashed with coalition troops in both central and southern Iraq on Sunday as the month-old uprising led by radical cleric Moqtada Sadr showed no sign of abating while the US military came under new fire over the abuse of prisoners.
Three Iraqis were killed in an early morning rocket attack that targeted a British camp near the main southern city of Basra while two Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded in clashes in Karbala and Najaf.
A local police chief was killed on Sunday near the southern city of Amara, tribal sources said. Mahmadawi was killed after accusing the governor of collaborating with the US-led occupation forces.
Twenty people were also wounded when a shell exploded in a market in the southern city of Nasiriyah. Interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said in comments published on Sunday that the uprising was causing great "harm to the aims and aspiration of the Iraqi people" and said Sadr should concentrate on fighting January elections.
Despite seeming increasingly isolated among the Shia community, Sadr was offered help from across the Islamic religious divide on Sunday. Nine pick-up trucks filled with food and medicine were brought for his militia by a delegation from the Sunni fighters of Fallujah.
The president's comments came after Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged that Washington would respect the sovereignty of the post-June 30 administration and lead key allies Britain, Italy and Japan in pulling out its troops if asked.
Returning to the theme on Sunday, Mr Powell said Washington would also accept any government chosen by the Iraqi people, even an Islamist one. In a fifth straight day of clashes in Karbala, US tanks made a brief foray into the city centre on Sunday morning, approaching two of holiest shrines.
Sporadic exchanges of fire were heard around the city centre where militiamen had been regrouping after overnight clashes in which 13 people were reported injured. In Najaf, two Sadr militiamen were killed and two wounded when they attacked a US convoy early on Sunday, a US officer said.
The US military faced fresh allegations from the US media that the abuse of detainees in Iraq was not an aberration but a practice encouraged by the high command. Two Iraqis working for the US-led coalition were shot dead and two others wounded when their vehicle came under a hail of gunfire in southern Baghdad, the US military said on Sunday. -AFP
