Attacks kill 11 as Rumsfeld makes surprise visit to Iraq

BAGHDAD, Oct 10 (AFP) - US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a surprise visit to Iraq Sunday, predicted violence would increase ahead of January's elections as rebel attacks killed 11 people including a US soldier.
But giving a boost to efforts to restore security, rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army militia was poised to disarm in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City, while leaders from the rebel bastion of Fallujah were negotiating a truce with the Iraqi government.
And an Islamist group in Iraq announced it had released 10 Turkish hostages after their company pulled out of the country, Al-Jazeera television reported, although there was no immediate confirmation from Ankara.
"An armed group calling itself Salafist Abu Bakr al-Seddiq Group released 10 Turkish hostages it had been holding for 40 days," the news channel said.
Eying January's high stakes elections, Rumsfeld made an unannounced trip to Baghdad and the Al-Asad airbase in Fallujah's restive province of Al-Anbar for talks with Iraqi officials and US commanders.
"We expect the level of violence and difficulties to increase between now and the Iraqi elections in January," he told hundreds of troops at al-Asad. "So I don't see that we would have a reduction in US and coalition forces between now and January."
In Baghdad, Rumsfeld and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi held talks on the scheduled elections, endangered by the endemic violence that has gripped the nation since the downfall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Rumsfeld, who held talks with defence minister from US allies in Iraq on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf on Saturday, later visited the northern cities of Kirkuk, Arbil and Mosul before jetting off to Europe.
Insurgents greeted Rumsfeld's visit with two attacks in the capital, including an explosion near Iraq's oil ministry that killed at least 10 people.
Witnesses described the blast as a rocket attack and doctors put the death toll at 10. An oil ministry official described it as a suicide car bombing and said 17 people were killed.
Elsewhere in the capital, a car bomb exploded in central Baghdad's Zayyuna district, killing the vehicle's driver and a US soldier, police and the military said.
The US military also announced the death of a US marine in al-Anbar province, raising the number of soldiers killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion to 1,065.
The two attacks were claimed in a statement posted on an Islamic website purported to be from Islamic militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's Unity and Holy War group.
Despite the violence, Allawi's government was on the brink of ending six months of brutal urban fighting in the capital's impoverished district of Sadr City.
A senior aide to the rebel cleric Sadr said an agreement due to come into force Monday had been reached for the Iraqi government to free all Sadr partisans and to stop pursuing members of his Mehdi Army militia.
In return, the Sadr militia would suspend attacks against US and Iraqi forces and hand in heavy and medium-sized weapons in the squalid district, said Sheikh Abdul Zahra Suwaidiy. The Iraqi forces would pay cash for the arms.
After August clashes in Najaf, Sadr's Mehdi Army agreed to leave the Shiite shrine city, but there was no formal disarmament of the militia, which is spread around the country.
Iraqi national security advisor Kassem Daoud hailed the agreement Sunday and said the government had 500 million dollars to rebuild the violence-blighted neigborhood.
Iraqi police and national guard will patrol Sadr City, and "the multinational force will intervene whenever is necessary," Daoud told reporters.
After five days of the weapons buyback programme, Daoud said Iraqi forces would be free to conduct sweeps in Sadr City. However, the Mehdi Army has insisted searches were not included in the deal.
The US military also offered a cautious endorsement of the initiative.
Young fighters were seen defusing roadside bombs and a couple of them detonated in the teeming slum of 2.5 million people.
Sadr's main representative in Baghdad, Sheikh Ali Sumeisim, was meeting with fighters to tell them about the initiative, Suwaidiy said.
A deal with Sadr would shore up one flank for the US and Iraqi forces in the run-up to national polls, allowing them to concentrate on Fallujah, the epicentre of the Sunni Muslim insurgency, and other trouble spots around central Iraq.
In talks with figures from Fallujah, the Iraqi government is hoping to avert a violent resolution to reassert control over the city, which has become a suspected base for foreign fighters like Zarqawi.
Sheikh Khaled Hamoud, a tribal leader, said the sides were on the verge of a breakthrough.
Sticking points remain the make-up of a security force for Fallujah and whether US troops will be permitted to enter the city -- a virtual necessity for the supervision of US-funded rebuilding projects.
Keeping up the pressure on insurgents, some 2,000 US and Iraqi troops arrested 15 suspected insurgents Saturday on the fifth day of a sweep aimed at restoring law and order just south of Baghdad, the US military said.
Revelations of the last hours of British hostage Ken Bigley, whose head was sawed off by Zarqawi followers, emerged Sunday as a video of his execution was posted on the internet.
Bigley made a desperate, final appeal for Prime Minister Tony Blair to save his life before he was beheaded by his captors in Iraq, the video showed.
Meanwhile, Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski also made a surprise visit to his country's 2,500 troops in Iraq on Sunday.
During the trip Szmajdzinski announced plans to move the command for the Polish-led south-central multinational division from Hilla to Diwaniyah at the end of the year, according to Poland's PAP news agency.
But a Polish government spokesman said the move had not been finalised.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski has said Warsaw wants to withdraw its troops from Iraq during the course of next year, in the face of strong opposition to the deployment at home.