Three U.S. soldiers were killed and six injured

WASHINGTON, May 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Attacks on U.S. soldiers and the murder of a singer who used to glorify Saddam Hussein in his songs underscored the fragile security situation in the Iraq nearly six weeks after Saddam's regime crumbled.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed and six injured as U.S.-led forces stepped up patrols in an attempt to bring “order” to Iraq, the Central Command announced Sunday, May 18.

Meanwhile, U.S. administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer arrived in Mosul after announcing a host of political and law-enforcement measures in a frenzied first week on the job.

A U.S. soldier from the Fourth Infantry Division died early Sunday in Iraq "as a result of a non-hostile gunshot," the command said in a statement, giving no further details, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

And a U.S. marine died and another was injured when the large transport vehicle they were in rolled over southeast of the town of Al-Samawah. The injured Marine is expected to recover, officials said.

One soldier was killed and three injured as they detonated unexploded ammunition Saturday, May 17, in Baghdad, while two soldiers were injured separately when assailants attacked their transport truck, the Central Command said.

The soldiers destroying the ammunition, belonging to the U.S. Army V Corps, were rushed to a field hospital for medical attention after the Saturday accident.

Also Saturday, two U.S. soldiers were injured when assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their transport truck near the town of Habbaniyah.

The injuries were not life threatening, the command said.

In a separate Saturday incident, assailants also armed with a rocket-propelled grenade destroyed an army tanker truck at a Baghdad fuel depot. There were no U.S. or civilian casualties, and marines detained four Iraqis for questioning, the statement added.

On Tuesday, May 13, two U.S. marines were killed when unexploded ordnance they were handling detonated. And on Wednesday, May 14,  nine Iraqi children were killed and seven wounded when a rocket they were playing with exploded in southern Iraq.

In Washington, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss tried to make sense of the chaos in Iraq.

"These people have lived under an iron-fisted ruler in Saddam Hussein. They have not been allowed any freedoms whatsoever," Chambliss said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' program.

"And all of a sudden now, they are free and they're very emotional, and they're doing things that are probably not characteristic of the Iraqi people," he said.

Democratic Representative Jane Harman told NBC the U.S.-led force in Iraq were not prepared to protect the peace.

"As the mother of a teenage daughter, I know if you don't set limits around children, they'll test you," she said. "And we should have predicted that there would be the looting, or at least more looting than we foresaw."

Both seemed to realize that considerably more U.S. resources would be needed in Iraq to secure peace.

‘Maybe Years’

U.S. administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer "is committed to doing the job that's necessary to restore the peace," Chambliss said. "If it means more troops, he's going to have more troops there. He's been realistic. He said . . . it's going to take months, maybe years."

Harman said Bremer "could do this job if we commit the resources. If we don't, he'll fail."

In February 2003, Army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki said at least some 200,000 troops would be needed to maintain peace in a post-Saddam Iraq. He was dismissed publicly twice by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Meanwhile, the Central Command issued a lengthy statement detailing efforts to maintain peace.

A Marine patrol early Sunday "engaged several Iraqis in a truck, who fired at an Iraqi police station," the statement read. "They chased it into a neighborhood and were able to track the suspects to a house," where they captured two wounded Iraqis.

In another incident, a joint patrol of U.S. military police and Iraqi police thwarted an attempted robbery in Baghdad on Friday, with one arrest.

US military police also thwarted a carjacking in Baghdad on Thursday, and arrested a suspect and turned him over to Iraqi police.

The U.S.-led forces "continue to aggressively patrol to make Iraq safer for all Iraqis by eliminating smuggling and trade in weapons and explosives," the statement read.

In Mosul, Bremer sought to press his campaign to stem post-war lawlessness in Iraq by touring a police station and a courthouse in Iraq's main northern city.

Bremer also held talks with Mayor Ghanim al-Basso and other members of a new multi-ethnic city council installed following U.S.-organized elections held on May 5 in a bid to stem unrest in the often-volatile, ethnic quilt of a city. Residents here include Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen and Assyrian Christians.

The visit caps Bremer's first week as Iraq's top U.S. overseer, during which he banned Saddam's Baath party chiefs from the public sector, sought to boost security, and hinted that the U.S.-led coalition would extend its grip on power in the country.

In Baghdad, the famous Iraqi singer Daoud al-Qaissi was shot dead by unidentified armed men at his home, neighbors told AFP.

Qaissi, who was in his 50s, headed the union of Iraqi artists, and had mobilized singers, poets, actors and painters during the U.S.-led war on Iraq to sing the praises of the Baath regime and the army.