BAGHDAD, Nov 20: - Guerillas stormed a Baghdad police station and ambushed an American patrol, killing a soldier and wounding nine, in daylight attacks in the capital on Saturday, defying US efforts to crush the resistance.
Hours after a US general acknowledged that it was hasty to claim this month's offensive on Falluja had broken the back of the resistance, guerillas killed three policemen in a dawn strike on their station in Baghdad's Aadhamiya district.
Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al Zarqawi's group claimed the attack on "the army of idolatrous America and its apostate subordinates". Washington says the Jordanian probably escaped from Falluja before a US assault that killed 1,200 guerillas.
The Aadhamiya attack followed a raid by the Iraqi National Guard on the nearby Abu Hanifa mosque 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 Shia who heads the US-backed government, blamed Friday's bloodshed on "terrorists" in the mosque. The government says it will quell the resistance before elections 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.
BAGHDAD BLOODSHED: Government spokesman Thaer al Naqib claimed at a news conference the assault on Falluja had reduced the number of guerrilla attacks.
But the capital witnessed one of its most unsettled days for a while, as US tanks and helicopters helped beat off the rocket-firing militants during a three-hour battle in Aadhamiya.
The US soldier was killed and nine wounded when a patrol was caught in an ambush in Baghdad.-Reuters
Official, 3 aides gunned down
A senior official at Iraq's ministry of public works and three of her aides were gunned down in Baghdad on Saturday morning as they travelled to their office, a ministry spokesman said.
Amal Abdel Hamid, who was in charge of the ministry's technical department, had received repeated death threats, said Jassem Mohammed.-AFP