US army admits Iraqi capital is still ugly place , writes Deaglán de Bréadún, in Doha.
Baghdad was "still an ugly place", the coalition's director of operations has told a news conference at US Central Command's (Centcom) regional headquarters in the capital of Qatar.
As Maj Gen Gene Renuart spoke, news was coming in of a fierce four-hour battle at a Baghdad mosque in which five Iraqi fighters and a US Marine were killed.
While Iraqi military resistance continued on a sporadic basis in Baghdad and elsewhere, there was also reports of increasing civil unrest, disorder and violence in different parts of the country.
Probably the most serious incident was the murder of a senior Shia Muslim leader, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, in Najaf.
Speaking of the Baghdad battle, a Centcom official said they had acquired information that "a group of regime leadership" was trying to organise a meeting in the Imam al-Adham mosque in the Iraqi capital.
A spokesman for the US 3rd Infantry Division said in Baghdad they had received information that Saddam Hussein was in the mosque.
Maj Gen Renuart said: "We had information that a meeting may be occurring of some senior leadership in this particular area of the city.
"It happened that this area was also an area that was planned for military operations. And so, the confluence of both of those came together this morning in the vicinity of the mosque.
"Our troops were fired on, took heavy fire from the vicinity of this mosque and another location and were engaged in a fairly heavy fire-fight for a number of hours. We've resolved that. We've killed or captured the enemy force that was taking us under fire, and we continue operations through there," he said.
In addition to the mosque battle, US forces have launched at least three air attacks on Iraqi leadership targets, but when asked by The Irish Times if he knew the whereabouts of the principal regime figures, Maj Gen Renuart said he did not know and that it was "not really important".
"We'll continue our pursuit of any intelligence that might indicate where they are. I don't know that they're alive and I don't know that they're dead. But that's, again, not really important to us," he said. Taking an overview of the military situation, he said: "It's important to note that despite what you see in terms of localised euphoria in places in some of the cities, that this operation is a long way from complete.
"We have localised pockets throughout the greater Baghdad area that we have to deal with, and we have a number of areas throughout the country that are not yet stabilised."
Speaking on the situation in Baghdad, Maj Gen Renuart said, "There are many parts of the city that are either not secured by US forces or are sort of unsecured at all, and there are other places in the city where we believe there are still pockets of remaining small elements of Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard and paramilitary forces."
In a separate incident, the Shia cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei was killed with one of his aides by a mob in Najaf yesterday. He was the son of the late Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei, leader of Iraq's Shia at the time of the first Gulf War.
He was stabbed to death at the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, one of the holiest shrines for Shia Muslims. Majid was a close aide of Iraq's leading Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who last week urged his followers not to obstruct the invasion by coalition forces.
A suicide bomber detonated explosives at a US checkpoint in the capital killing "some" US marines, a US officer said last night.
"Some are dead in the attack but I don't know how may," marine officer Matt Baker said.
The bomber walked up to a checkpoint in Baghdad's Shia stronghold of Saddam City and detonated explosives that were strapped to his chest.
Marine Capt Joe Plenzler said, according to initial reports, "a man strapped with explosives approached a Marine checkpoint and detonated himself."
"It confirms what we expected," Capt Plenzler said. "We expected the enemy would try to pull all the dirty tricks out of the bag."
No information was immediately available on whether there were civilian casualties.