by Ned Parker
BAGHDAD - The spiritual leader of Iraq`s Shiites urged political parties to speed up lagging talks to form a government as US forces and rebels squared off in their biggest battle since the country`s January 30 elections.
Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, cited by a top Shiite politician, said that the slowness of Shiites and Kurds in completing talks to form a government over one-and-a-half months after the vote was affecting Iraqis` lives.
Meanwhile, the US military on Monday gave details of the way an American military police patrol, shadowing a supply convoy, battled and killed more than half of a group of 40 to 50 rebels who had hemmed in the trucks in an ambush.
Following a brief statement about the rescue on Sunday, the military said a total of 26 rebels were killed, seven wounded and one captured. The US side suffered seven wounded, it added.
The insurgents had set up an ambush on both sides of the road and were waiting for the supply convoy, which was heading to a military base south of Baghdad.
The convoy was under small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades about nine kilometres (five miles) east of Salman Pak, when the US military police patrol arrived, said Major Rob Simmons.
"The patrol inflicted massive casualties on the attacking force. Total enemy killed in action is 26 and another seven enemy wounded in action. Additionally, there was one enemy captured," he said.
The fighting was a reminder of how a dangerous insurgency sprung forth in the aftermath of the US-led invasion two years ago.
Iraqi insurgents, thought to group Saddam loyalists, radical Islamists, foreign fighters and criminals, have continued to mount a steady challenge to the Americans and Iraqi security forces since the January 30 election that saw more than eight million people cast ballots.
In the latest violence Monday, a car bomb wounded 10 people on Monday in the centre of Samarra, 125 kilometres (75 miles) north of Baghdad, a medical source said.
The casualties included four women and three children, the source added.
No other details were immediately available.
In Baghdad`s northwestern Kadhamiyah area, an Iraqi soldier was killed and three were wounded in a blast on Monday, while a body, with its throat slashed, was found west of the capital, medical and security sources said.
Attacks also claimed the lives of two US soldiers Sunday, one in the northern city of Kirkuk in a roadside bombing that wounded three others, and another in the restive Al-Anbar province, west of the capital, according to the US military.
In the main northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber with a fake badge slipped on Sunday into a building housing the provincial anti-corruption department and blew himself up inside the office of its chief, General Walid Kachmoula, killing him and two of his guards.
Attackers struck again hours later opening fire on Kachmoula`s funeral procession as it made its way to the cemetery, killing two people and wounding 14, hospital sources said.
The city has become a new front for the insurgency since November.
In another flashpoint town, gunmen attacked a police station in Baquba killing four police and wounding two as a truck bomb rammed into the entrance of an Iraqi army barrack nearby, wounding 17 people, a police official said. Four insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight.
Meanwhile, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the election-winning Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, said Sistani was unhappy with the delay in talks to form a government, after meeting the Shiite spiritual leader in Najaf on Sunday.
"The sayed (honorific) was sorry for the delay in forming the Iraqi government because this will adversely affect people`s lives and called for it to be formed soon," Hakim told reporters after meeting Sistani.
"There is progress in negotiations and I think all points should be finalised by Thursday. If not, the unveiling of the new government will be a few days after that."
Talks between the Shiites and Kurds are now down to sharing leadership and cabinet posts in a coalition government and ways to include the election-boycotting Sunnis and outgoing premier Iyad Allawi.
Despite the continuing high casualty toll from insurgent violence two years after the US invasion, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted major progress had nonetheless been achieved.
"It`s a wonderful thing to see 25 million Iraqis liberated, to see their economy improve as it has been, to see their political process move toward democracy," Rumsfeld told Fox News.
Some 11,000 American troops have been wounded and 1,511 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
Relations between Iraq and its pro-Western neighbour Jordan were in crisis as both governments withdrew their envoys following a wave of protests over the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a deadly suicide bombing in the central city of Hilla that killed some 120 people and wounded scores, most of them Shiites.
But Jordanian government spokeswoman Asma Khodr tried to tone down the crisis, speaking of the need to "protect Jordan`s ties with Iraq and strengthen them."

03/21/2005 14:51 GMT