BAGHDAD (AFP) - US aircraft and artillery strikes pounded suspected weapons warehouses in the insurgent bastion of Fallujah, while hundreds of British troops prepared to move closer to Baghdad to help crush rebel strongholds.
One of the darkest aspects of America's battle against Iraqi insurgents was on display Thursday as a US soldier was sentenced to eight years in jail for his part in Iraq's prisoner abuse scandal.
In a separate case, a US staff sergeant faced a possible death sentence over the killing of a seriously wounded Iraqi in Baghdad.
In the north of the country, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi narrowly escaped a mortar attack while on a trip to Mosul, as officials expressed concern about a lack of experts on the ground to help prepare for landmark elections set for January because of security fears.
Amid the concern, US Secretary of State Colin Powell vowed that US-led forces will protect UN officials charged with helping organize elections if sufficient troops cannot be found from other countries.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari lamented the fact that the dangerous climate was keeping UN experts out of the country.
"The number of UN experts is no more than 30, while there were more than 300 in Timor," Zebari was quoted Thursday as saying.
The United Nations largely pulled out of Iraq after its Baghdad headquarters was targeted in a suicide car bombing in August 2003 that killed 22 staff.
In London, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon agreed to an unprecedented US request to redeploy 850 crack troops to a volatile area southwest of Baghdad, freeing up US soldiers for an expected assault on Fallujah.
The redeployment marks the first time since the March 2003 invasion that British soldiers have left southern Iraq for US-controlled areas, where they will be at increased risk of attack, but they appeared to be ready for action.
"There is a sense of relief that they have been told what to do so now they are focusing on the job in hand," said Major Charles Mayo, spokesman for the British-led multinational forces based in Iraq's second city of Basra.
"They are now making preparations for moving," Mayo told AFP by telephone, though he declined to say when the contingent would head northwards.
Britain has about 8,500 troops in the relatively calm south, mostly around Basra, compared to almost 140,000 US troops in the centre and north.
Washington's request for back-up came as it focuses on resolving a stand-off in the rebel-held city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, that has been hit by near daily US air raids and ringed by more than 1,000 troops for the past week.
Artillery and air strikes shook the city late Thursday, as US marines announced they were eliminating weapons warehouses in the area, considered a hub for suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
Underscoring the uphill struggle to restore stability by January, there was no news on the Baghdad chief of international aid group CARE, Margaret Hassan, a British-Iraqi national, who was taken hostage by gunmen on Tuesday.
CARE suspended its operations in Iraq on Wednesday after the 59-year-old became the latest victim in a hostage crisis that has already claimed scores of lives and prompted many international humanitarian agencies to flee.
Separately, Iraq's Oil Minister Thamer Ghadban said attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure and its import of oil products due to insufficient refining capacity has cost the country seven billion dollars since March 2003.
In one sign of progress in the struggle to restore order, an arms-for-cash scheme in Baghdad's restive Sadr City slum entered its final day with Allawi saying that 4.5 million dollars have been dished out to people handing in their weapons since it began October 11.
At a US military court in Baghdad, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick was sentenced to eight years in prison and expelled from the army for abusing inmates at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, as the hearing of another US soldier charged with murdering an Iraqi opened.
Frederick, the highest-ranking official to be tried so far in the prison abuse case, had pleaded guilty to a range of five charges from making hooded inmates masturbate to punching them in the chest.
A military judge also demoted the 38-year-old before the discharge and docked his pay.
Frederick was the first of three military police due to be court martialled in Baghdad this week for their alleged part in abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Away from the spotlight of the prison abuse scandal, Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban stood in a courtroom accused of premeditated murder and conspiracy to murder.
Alban and fellow staff sergeant Johnny Horne, who is to appear before a judge at a later date, are charged with shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in Sadr City. They insist he would have died anyway of his injuries.
If convicted the soldiers face a minimum of life in prison or a maximum of the death sentence.
Meanwhile, insurgents fired mortars close to Allawi and his entourage, which included the interior minister and his national security advisor, during a visit to Mosul, but no one was injured.
Mortars fell on a multinational force base as Allawi and other visiting officials prepared to board helicopters on their way back to Baghdad.
In further unrest, two members of Iraq's national guard and a woman were killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad, while two policemen and two national guards were wounded by a roadside bomb in the troubled city of Baquba.
The casualties came after a wave of car bombings on Wednesday killed nine people, including four children and injured many others, including 11 US troops.
10/21/2004 - 22:07 GMT - AFP