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| Tuesday, 25 May 2004 |
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Fresh violence, new deaths raise political costs of Iraq war KUFA, Iraq, Monday (AFP) US-led forces killed 32 Iraqis during a raid on a mosque in the holy city of Kufa but a string of tactical victories has not lightened the war's political costs for US President George W. Bush. A US marine was killed near Iraq's powder-keg Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the US military said, bringing the US troop death toll in Iraq to 795 including 579 soldiers killed in action. Meanwhile, the United States and Britain will present the UN Security Council on Monday with the first draft of a resolution on Iraq, diplomats on the council told AFP. The potential resolution will seek support for Iraq's political transition, a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity. The text "will be circulated in the coming days, to various groups at the UN and I would say the coalition partners as well," the official said. The US-led coalition said all those slain in Kufa were militiamen loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who for a month have been battling US troops in nearby Najaf and in Karbala - two of the holiest cities for Muslim Shiites. Twenty of the dead lost their lives in the mosque compound after US armored vehicles smashed through the gates and fired on the militiamen, witnesses said. The US 1st Armored Division said in a statement that its soldiers had raided the mosque after coming under fire from insurgents in several locations in Kufa. But in Karbala, to the north of Kufa, the streets were calmer after both Sadr's Mehdi Army and coalition forces withdrew from the city center after weeks of fighting. In other unrest, a woman and a policeman were killed and nine people wounded, including two children, in two attacks involving a mortar round and a roadside bomb near the southern port of Basra, medics and police said. The latest violence capped a bloody week in which separate car bombings killed Ezzedine Salim, who headed the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council, and wounded a deputy interior minister in Baghdad. The ongoing mayhem, relentless revelations of the abuse of prisoners by US forces and the mounting US casualty lists are taking a political toll on Bush ahead of the November 2 presidential election. Many polls show the US public growing increasingly skeptical of Bush's handling of the war. His overall approval ratings are in the mid-40s, lower than at any point since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Leading US lawmakers said Sunday they expected more courts-martial in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, and that proceedings would target more senior military officials than the low-ranking soldiers targeted so far. |
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