IRAQ: US soldiers arrested Muslim militants with links to the most wanted Iraqi official still on the run, but the assassination of a senior Iraqi judge highlighted instability in postwar Iraq.
US troops hope the militants will generate intelligence leading to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of Saddam Hussein's senior aides.
"We detained three individuals in the extremist religious organisations with ties to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri," Lieut Col William Adamson, head of a US task force in Baquba, said.
Douri, who has a $10 million reward on his head, is number six on a list of 55 Iraqis most wanted by the United States and is suspected of playing a role in directing insurgents.
The arrests raise important questions on links between Saddam loyalists and Islamic militants suspected of crossing Iraq's borders to wage holy war on occupation troops.
Col Adamson said arrests after Saddam's capture would make it easier to track down more guerrillas, who have killed 202 US troops since Washington declared major combat over on May 1st.
He said the militants had links to towns that have been the fiercest hotbeds of anti-American violence, such as Baquba, Falluja and Ramadi.
As US troops prepared for Christmas away from home, a senior official in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), warned that guerrillas may strike during the holiday period.
"It is wise to expect it could be a rough period. Psychologically they want to prove they have the capability. We are not taking any chances," the official said.
The US military has stepped up its hunt for insurgents since the capture of Saddam, which has handed President George W. Bush a boost in opinion polls.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed 60 per cent of Americans backed his handling of Iraq, compared to 48 per cent in mid-November.
But there was no sign that violence would ease any time soon. Mr Youssef Khoshi, a senior investigating judge in the northern city of Mosul, was killed by three men in a car on Monday night.
"He was shot six times from behind in the back. He died immediately," a police officer said.
The killing was part of a wave of attacks in recent weeks on officials working under Iraq's US-led administration, including policemen, oil executives and other judges.
A British commander said that while the multinational forces were still also coming under regular attack, the situation was not escalating.
"We have a consistent hit rate that sits between about three to five [a day\] so the problem is not going away from our perspective It is contained," said Gen Graeme Lamb, commander of British forces in the south-east of the country.
"Many of them are Iraqis and not so-called foreign fighters [Islamic militants]."
A US military convoy was attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade yesterday in Mosul, the US military said. A foreign private security guard was wounded.
A bomb was found on Monday in the home of Mr Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shia leader and current head of the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council, but was defused, his son said. Mr al-Hakim was in Moscow for debt relief talks.
Efforts to break the insurgents are set against US plans to hand power to Iraqis by mid-2004 but to keep troops in Iraq until guerrilla activity has been wiped out. Boosting Iraq's battered economy is key to improving security.
But the country with the world's second-largest oil reserves can only generate limited crude sales because of relentless attacks on its oil export pipeline in the north. - (Reuters)