Three killed in Iraq blast as US forces battle rebels

BAQUBAQ, Iraq - US forces pressed on Friday with a massive assault against Al-Qaeda linked insurgents in western Iraq as aid workers reported that hundreds of residents were fleeing the fighting.
In the latest attack in a surge of insurgent violence over the past two weeks that has underlined the tough task facing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari`s new cabinet, a suicide bomber struck at a truck transporting Iraqi soldiers.
The bomber drove his explosives-laden car into the truck carrying about 40 soldiers in Baquba, 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the capital, killing two soldiers and a civilian and wounding six others, security officials said.
But Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said: "The wave of violence is a sign of the terrorists` weakness. The only recourse they have left are car bombs.
"They have lost control of various cities and have been surrounded," Talabani told the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo during a visit to South America.
In other violence, one policeman was shot dead and three were wounded when gunmen opened fire on their patrol in western Baghdad, security officials and medics said. Two civilians were also hurt.
And gunmen kidnapped a border guard colonel from his home in Abi al-Khasib near the southern city of Basra, army officials said.
On Thursday, 24 Iraqis were killed in a string of insurgent attacks, including a car bomb on a busy Baghdad street that left 15 dead.
The surge in violence, resulting notably from car bomb attacks, has left more than 400 dead since the start of the month and has hobbled efforts by the Jaafari`s new Shiite-dominated government to seize the political initiative and rally Sunni Arabs to his side.
Minority Sunni Arabs, dominant under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, are believed to provide the backbone of the insurgency.
Meanwhile, US marines pressed on with their largest military operation since the spectacular assault on the extremist enclave of Fallujah west of Baghdad last November.
"Operation Matador" was launched on May 7 in the Al-Qaim area near the border with Syria, through which much of the insurgency`s supply of arms and foreign fighters is believed to be smuggled in.
The area is a stronghold of Iraq`s most wanted man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda leader who has a 25 million dollar price on his head and has claimed some of the bloodest attacks in Iraq and beheadings of foreign hostages.
The US military said F-18 jets bombed a house occupied by at least four gunmen in the area on Thursday.
The marines, who have some 1,000 men engaged in the operation, claim they have killed more than 100 rebels over the past five days. Zarqawi`s network denied the losses in an Internet statement.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Red Crescent was distributing supplies to families said to have fled the fighting.
Some 350 families fled the town of Al-Qaim into the western desert, Red Crescent spokesman Mazen Abdallah told AFP.
In Baghdad, a statement said to be signed by Zarqawi, was distributed in broad daylight outside a Sunni mosque after Friday prayers.
The statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, denounced alliances between "the troops of the crusaders, the Rafidha (Shiites) and the Jews".
The statement claimed that US marines had failed to enter the city of Al-Qaim five days after launching their offensive.
A top Iraqi Shiite cleric, meanwhile called for a purge from the government and civil service of former high-ranking members of Saddam`s Baath party.
"Today there are 100,000 high-ranking Baathists in Iraq and it is up to the government to purge the country of them," Sheikh Sadr Addin Qubanchi, a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said.
"By a purge, we mean they should not be allowed into any important decision- making posts, not that they should be physically liquidated," he told worshippers at Friday prayers at the Fatima mosque in Najaf, the holy Shiite city in the south of the country.
A decision to push ahead with "debaathification" belongs to the Iraqi people, Qubanchi said, adding that foreign countries should not interfere in the process.
Following Saddam`s ouster, US officials initially called for removing all senior members of his Baath party from positions of power.
But they have since urged caution, fearing that purges, especially in the army, could push Sunni Arab officers into the arms of the insurgency.

05/13/2005 13:00 GMT