LONDON, Oct 27: Two straight days of deadly attacks in Baghdad signal the start of a “classic guerilla war” against US and British forces in Iraq, but it’s hard to say who exactly is behind them, experts in London said on Monday.

Forty-three people were killed on Monday when five car bombs went off almost simultaneously outside Red Crescent headquarters and four police stations in the Iraqi capital.

Two other explosions rocked Baghdad on Sunday, just hours after a daring rocket attack on the Rashid hotel, where US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

“This is pretty serious stuff going on,” said veteran military affairs analyst Francis Tusa, publisher of Defence Analysis, a monthly journal.

“This isn’t random attacks... not of this size. This is the start of a campaign — it’s as simple as that,” he told AFP, adding that the Bush administration is deliberately trying to play down their seriousness.

“The Americans are saying, ‘it’s just bandits’. No, they’re better that that. They have got an organization... They have got targets, they have plans, this is a classic guerilla terrorist campaign.”

That said, however, another expert at the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said it was hard to identify the “brains” behind the attacks.

“It’s clear that they are not just Saddam Hussein loyalists, as the Americans have been saying from the beginning,” said the expert, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.

There could be a number of groups involved, the expert said, but it remains hard to say exactly who is responsible.

On Monday, US General Mark Hertling told reporters in Baghdad blamed “foreign fighters” for the attacks, which he said were unlike others linked to Saddam loyalists.

So volatile is the situation, the IISS expert said, that US forces could be withdrawn from Iraq before US presidential elections in November 2004, once the whole Iraq problem is given over to the United Nations.

In the near term, Tusa said, the United States will “need more people on the ground” — meaning more troops — while speeding up the deployment of post-Saddam Iraqi police officers.

“At the end of the day, you’ve got to hand it over to them,” said Tusa of the police, adding that the security forecast for the coming weeks is bleak.

“We are going to see more spectacular (attacks), more rocket firings, more car bombs,” he said.

“If that means more shields, more concrete barriers, more aggressive patrolling (from the Americans), it means they will be more and more isolated from the population.” —AFP