BAGHDAD - Rebel attacks in the capital are expected to rise in coming weeks despite US-Iraqi efforts to stem them, as insurgents try to play up insecurity in the country, a US military official said Friday.
"I think there will be a lot of small attacks in the next couple of weeks with the (Iraqi) prime minister going to the United States," Lieutenant Colonel Michael Pryor of the US 3rd Infantry Division's Task Force Baghdad told AFP.
"They're trying to influence the international population through the media that Iraq may not be as secure as everyone makes it out to be."
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari was in Washington on Friday to meet with President George W. Bush and help him try to ease increasing American concern about the Iraq war.
In the volatile city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, US marines late Thursday suffered "a number of casualties" when a convoy was attacked by a suicide car bomber, Staff Sergeant Nick Minecci, a US military spokesman said.
Minecci said he did not know if any US troops had died in the attack.
In the predominantly Sunni northern city of Mosul, four Iraqis including a police officer were killed and five others wounded in three separate attacks late Thursday and early Friday, police Brigadier General Wathiq Mohammed said.
Three policemen were also wounded Friday in a roadside bombing that targeted their convoy in the disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk.
At least 35 (eds: correct) people were killed and around 100 wounded in coordinated car bomb attacks in central Baghdad on Wednesday and Thursday.
But according to Pryor, insurgent attacks are becoming less coordinated and less successful. "We think the intent is just to cause a lot of noise to make it seem like there are a lot of activities," he said.
Iraq's insurgency is believed to be made up of a mixture of former Saddam Hussein regime figures and foreign Islamist fighters.
The sound of gunfire and explosions is still common in the capital, however, with almost daily suicide and car bomb attacks and drive-by shootings killing more than 300 around the country in June, many in the Baghdad region.
The new upsurge in violence comes as US and Iraqi troops said they had arrested at least 1,200 suspects in a massive month-long operation in the capital.
More than 600 checkpoints set up around the capital were to serve as a cordon to keep insurgents out, Iraq officials said when they kicked off the operation at the end of May.
"I think it's having a very good disruptive effect on their ability to mass any amount of people," Pryor said of the ongoing Operation Lightning.
06/24/2005 10:16 GMT