Australian, Estonian soldiers targeted as violence kills 12 in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A wave of explosions and clashes across Iraq left at least 12 people dead, including an Estonian soldier, while Australian troops came under fire in Baghdad.
The UN's nuclear watchdog, meanwhile, warned that nearly 400 tonnes of explosives had vanished from an unguarded base in Iraq.
The latest violence came as Iraqi officials said the perpetrators of the weekend slaughter of 49 newly-trained soldiers in eastern Iraq could have been tipped off from within the ranks.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has pledged to restore order, using force if necessary, with the help of the US-led military ahead of elections promised by January.
Underscoring the challenge facing the government, attackers detonated a car laden with explosives as an Australian convoy drove down a residential district near Australia's embassy in Baghdad.
The blast, claimed by a group loyal to Al-Qaeda-linked militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, killed three Iraqis and wounded at least 16 other people, including three Australian soldiers.
An Australian defence spokesman described the incident as the first direct attack on Australian vehicles in the country.
Canberra along with London and Washington were the founding members of the coalition that led the invasion of Iraq last year but has a far smaller number of troops on the ground.
Rebels lashed out at another coalition member in a roadside bombing against an Estonian convoy in western Baghdad that left one of Estonia's 45 soldiers in Iraq dead and five wounded.
They struck again in the northern city of Mosul in a double car bombing against the governor and other administrative targets that killed four people and wounded four others.
The attacks were another rude awakening for Iraqis after the weekend massacre of 49 new army recruits, who were gunned down execution-style in eastern Iraq, and a twin suicide car bombing against Iraqi police and national guards that killed 20.
Desperate to crush the insurgency, US and Iraqi forces have targeted rebel strongholds in recent weeks, with their sights now set on the Sunni Muslim bastion of Fallujah that has been the target of near daily US air strikes.
Outgunned militarily, insurgents have turned to guerrilla warfare, hitting the country's security forces, foreign workers and US-led troops in a relentless wave of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.
The Zarqawi-linked Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers claimed responsibility for the slaughter of the unarmed Iraqi soldiers as well as the car bombing against the Australians.
Statements by the group, formerly known as the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War), that were posted on the Internet could not be independently verified.
An official inquiry has been opened into one of the bloodiest attacks against Iraq's fledgling security forces which have been a prime target of insurgents.
Investigators would try to determine whether the army's ranks have been infiltrated by the insurgents, said Akil Adeli, deputy governor of Diyala province where Sunday's massacre took place as the soldiers travelled home in minibuses after completing a training course.
In another disturbing development, the International Atomic Energy Agency said 380 tonnes of powerful explosives that could be used in conventional or nuclear missiles had disappeared from an unguarded military installation.
The Iraqi ministry of science and technology informed the IAEA of the disappearance of nearly 380 tonnes of mainly HMX and RDX explosive materiel on October 10, agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told AFP, confirming a report in The New York Times.
"It can be used in a nuclear explosion device, for the explosion," she said, adding: "That's why it was under IAEA verification and monitoring" before the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
The New York Times said the materiel "could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings."
Fleming noted: "From a proliferation standpoint there is a possible application in nuclear weapons, (but) the most immediate concern is the threat of the explosive falling in the wrong hands and being used to commit terrorist acts," she said.
In other violence Monday, at least three people were killed in clashes between rebels and US troops in the western city of Ramadi.
And an Iraqi national guard was killed as he tried to disarm a bomb placed near an Iraqi national guard post -- another major target of the insurgency -- to the north of Baquba.
Iraq's vital oil industry also suffered as saboteurs blew up a section of an oil pipeline in northern Iraq, sparking a fire but failing to halt exports, police said.
Separately, a few hundred disabled Iraqis pleaded with the kidnappers of British-Iraqi aid director Margaret Hassan to set her free saying their living conditions had deteriorated since she was abducted a week ago.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, said the planned redeployment of 850 crack British troops to a volatile area near Baghdad was "a limited operation for a limited period".
"The key issue is the Iraq elections in January," Blair, speaking about the deployment for the first time, told journalists. "That is a very big moment for the Iraqi people."

10/26/2004 - 00:44 GMT - AFP