BAGHDAD: Guerrilla attacks in Iraq have become more lethal, the top US general in the country said on Thursday after three soldiers died in one day, adding urgency to American efforts to garner help stabilizing the country.
“The enemy has evolved. It is a little bit more lethal, little bit more complex, little bit more sophisticated and in some cases a little bit more tenacious,” said Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq.
“As long as we are here the coalition need to be prepared to take casualties,” he told a news conference. “We should not be surprised if one of these days we wake up to find there’s been a major firefight or a major terrorist attack.”
Since US President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1, at least 84 US soldiers have been killed in action.
On Wednesday, a 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack near the town of Samarra, a female soldier from the same division died in a remote-control bomb attack near Tikrit, and in Baghdad a soldier was shot and killed while patrolling the Mansur neighbourhood.
The violence continued on Thursday in the town of Falluja, a centre of resistance to US forces. Police said US gunfire killed an Iraqi man and wounded a woman and a six-year-old girl after an American patrol was shot at on Thursday. Two police officers were also wounded.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over his alleged weapons of mass destruction, face mounting political pressure over the failure to find any.
David Kay, the CIA official directing the weapons search in Iraq, was scheduled to brief the House and Senate intelligence committees on Thursday. Officials suggest Kay will say no conclusive evidence has been found of banned weapons.
Efforts in New York to agree a wider role for the United Nations are in stark contrast to events on the ground in Baghdad, where many international UN staff have been pulled out following two suicide bomb attacks on their headquarters.
Critics, who question whether the case for war was exaggerated, also ask whether it was worth the cost.—Reuters