IRAQ: US troops are facing a classic guerrilla war in Iraq spearheaded by Saddam Hussein loyalists, and US forces need to adapt their tactics to crush this increasingly organised resistance, the head of the US Central Command has said.
This contrasted with an assessment given by Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld on June 30th that it was not "anything like a guerrilla war or an organised resistance". But Gen John Abizaid, who commands US forces in Iraq, said a guerrilla war is what US troops were confronting.
The comments came as a missile was fired at a US military aircraft coming in to land at Baghdad airport and another US soldier was killed in Iraq.
"I think describing it as guerrilla tactics being employed against us is, you know, a proper thing to describe in strictly military terms," Gen Abizaid said during a Pentagon briefing.
He said US forces were fighting remnants of Saddam's Baath Party throughout Iraq.
He said mid-level officials of Saddam's government, including from the old intelligence and security agencies and the Special Republican Guard, "have organized at the regional level in cellular structure".
Meanwhile, suspected Saddam Hussein followers fired a surface-to-air missile at a US Hercules military transport plane as it was landing at Baghdad International Airport yesterday.
The missile missed its target but it was another example of the ever increasing violence against US in Iraq.
The attack may also delay plans to reopen the airport to commercials flights.
Elsewhere, the pro-American mayor of the Sunni Triangle city of Hadithah was shot and killed yesterday in escalating violence in Iraq that also took the life of an US soldier and an Iraqi child. Bullets riddled Mohammed Nayil al-Jurayfi's car as he drove with one of his nine sons through the city of about 150,000 about 150 miles north-west of Baghdad. The son also was killed.
Locals had accused the mayor of collaborating with coalition forces. The attack was certain to have an effect on other Iraqi officials sympathetic to the US.
One of the members of the newly inaugurated Iraqi Governing Council, hand-picked by the US administrator of Iraq, hails from Hadithah. Samir Shakir Mahmoud, the council member, is a Sunni but was a leading member of the opposition to Saddam.
The attacks were launched on the eve of a banned holiday that marked the 1968 Baathist coup that led 11 years later to Saddam grabbing power.
The July 17th celebration was one of six holiday's important to the Baathists that was outlawed by the Governing Council in its first official action.
In violence directed at US forces, the US soldier was killed in a rocket propelled grenade attack on a supply convoy west of Baghdad.
The eight-year-old child died when an attacker threw a grenade into a military vehicle guarding a bank in west Baghdad. The US driver was wounded along with four Iraqi bystanders.
"They're killing more Iraqis than they are Americans," said US Major Kevin West.