CAIRO, January 9 (IslamOnline.net) - In another desperate attempt to address unabated Iraqi resistance operations, the US is mulling the formation of special squads to target Iraqi resistance leaders and even sympathizers, a leading American weekly reported on Saturday, January 8.

The Pentagon proposes sending Special Forces teams to train and advise Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to do the job, Newsweek said.

While US Special Forces would lead operations across the borders in neighboring countries, Iraqi paramilitaries will carry out such operations inside the occupied country, officials told the weekly.

“What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are,” one senior US military officer said.

“We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing.”

According to the Newsweek, Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is among the most staunch supporters of the scheme, similar to that adopted by US president Ronald Reagan against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.

Last week, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy in the war-torn country.

A US soldier was killed in a bomb explosion while he was on patrol in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said.

According to the latest Pentagon figures, the death raised to 1,345 the number of soldiers killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, including 1,058 who died in combat.