source from NST International News
RAMADI, Iraq – U.S.-led civil administrators announced the creation of a new Iraqi army Monday, hoping to contain anger among soldiers jobless since Saddam Hussein military was disbanded and to curb a rash of anti-U.S. attacks.
The insurgents’ latest attacks included rocket propelled grenades fired at U.S. Army patrols in the western towns of Khaldiyah and Habaniyah, and an ambush in Ramadi that involved a 12-year-old girl, the military said Monday. No one was injured.
Meanwhile, U.S. experts were trying to identify the remains of those killed when coalition air and ground forces attacked a convoy of Iraqi leaders believed trying to escape to Syria, officials in Washington said.
Officials said they had no reason yet to believe that ousted leader Saddam or his sons Odai or Qusai were among the fugitives.
DNA tests are being conducted on the remains found at the site in western Iraq , near the Syrian border, as first reported in The Observer of London. Special operations forces attacked the three-vehicle convoy last Wednesday, working on information from previously captured leaders, the officials said.
A Pentagon official said on condition of anonymity that American forces traded fire with Syrian border guards during the strike, hitting several. It wasn’t clear who shot first or if any of the Syrians were killed.
Saddam and his sons are the top three on the U.S. list of most-wanted officials in Iraq, and coalition officials say the lack of evidence about their fate is fueling resistance to the occupation within Iraq.
In Baghdad, visiting U.S. senators cautioned that Americans should expect their forces to remain in Iraq for as long as five years.
“I don’t think the American people fully appreciate just how long we are going to be committed here and what the overall cost will be,” said Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., after meeting the head of the civil administration, L. Paul Bremer.
On Sunday, Iraq made its first foray back into the international oil market since the war, with the shipment of oil that has been stored for months at the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
But sabotage and looting of the 600-mile pipeline from the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk to Ceyhan delayed the flow of freshly pumped oil — the key to reconstructing an economy devastated by sanctions and war. Pumping was supposed to have begun Sunday.
Sabotage was blamed for a massive fire in a gas pipeline about 94 miles west of Baghdad on Saturday, and the al-Jazeera satellite television station reported another pipeline explosion near the Syrian border on Sunday.
In another key step toward reconstruction, U.S. officials announced early plans to bring back Iraq’s army, once one of the Arab world’s largest and most experienced.
Recruitment for the new force is to begin next week. An initial division of 12,000 men will be ready within a year and will grow to 40,000 within three years, said Walter Slocombe, a senior adviser for security and defense for the administration.
That would still be a fraction of the Saddam’s military force of 400,000.
Slocombe also promised support payments of $50 to $150 per month to up to 250,000 ex-soldiers.
The moved is aimed at stemming anger among former Iraqi army soldiers who lost their livelihood when the U.S.-led administration disbanded the army May 23. Ex-servicemen have since staged several protests, and U.S. troops killed two last Wednesday when one such demonstration turned violent.
“I am pleased to announce this first step in creating an armed force that will be professional, nonpolitical, militarily effective and truly representative of the country,” Slocombe said.
No payments would be made to the top four ranks of members of the now-banned Baath party. Anyone receiving funds must renounce Baathism, the political ideology that guided Iraq for more than three decades, even before Saddam came to power in the 1970s.
In Ramadi, a U.S. patrol came under small-arms fire on Sunday, and the patrol saw a young girl running away with an AK-47 assault rifle, said Capt. Burris Wollsieffer, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The bullets landed harmlessly in the dirt around the vehicles, he told The Associated Press on Monday.
The troops followed the girl home and found the rifle wrapped in a red dress propped in a corner. Three men in the household were taken for interrogation, but the troops allowed the girl to remain at home when they learned her age. They also seized $1,500 in cash and $1,000 in Iraqi dinars, the officer said.
“It’s just weird. It’s totally unconventional,” said Wollsieffer, when asked about the rising number of ambushes on his forces in Ramadi. “It’s guerrilla warfare.”
Two senior army officers met Monday with a prominent Islamic cleric, Abdullah al-Annay, who preaches in two Ramadi mosques, to ask him to tone down his anti-American sermons, Wollsieffer said.
“If he keeps this kind of speech going, they are just going to attack us more and more,” he said. Wollsieffer’s regiment has lost 10 men — more than half the 18 men reported killed in combat — since May 1 when major fighting was declared over.
The latest casualty came Sunday, when a grenade exploded into a military vehicle south of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding another from the 1st Armored Division.
