[Excerpt: As attacks mount before polls scheduled for late January, Iraq's intelligence chief has said more than 200,000 people are active in the insurgency.....Gen Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani told the AFP news agency "the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq"...... He estimated that 40,000 of the 200,000 were core fighters, while the remainder were volunteers and part-timers.]
http://212.58.240.132/1/hi/world/middle_east/4142329.stm Last Updated: Monday, 3 January, 2005, 16:46 GMT Attacks hit Iraqi security forces At least 16 Iraqis, mainly soldiers and police, have died in fresh attacks across the country, a day after a car bomb killed 23 soldiers in Balad. A suicide car bomb targeted the Baghdad offices of interim PM Iyad Allawi, killing two policemen and a civilian. Six Iraqi soldiers were also killed at a roadblock in the town of Tikrit. As attacks mount before polls scheduled for late January, Iraq's intelligence chief has said more than 200,000 people are active in the insurgency. Gen Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani told the AFP news agency "the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq". He estimated that 40,000 of the 200,000 were core fighters, while the remainder were volunteers and part-timers. Poll problems Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem al-Shaalan is reported to have said the elections scheduled for 30 January could be delayed if the Sunni Muslim community in Iraq agreed to take part, the AFP news agency says. In an interview with the agency, he said: "We have asked our Arab brothers, particularly in Egypt and Gulf countries, to get Iraqi Sunnis to participate in the elections and if such participation requires a delay to the election date, they could be delayed." Iraq's main Sunni political grouping, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has already called for a boycott of the election, and Sunni militant groups have threatened to attack voters. Significant participation in the election by Iraq's Sunni minority is widely seen as essential to the credibility of the vote. US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned on Sunday of more violence ahead of the elections. Insurgents have intensified attacks against Iraqi and US forces, as part of their efforts to disrupt the elections to a constitutional assembly. In other violence on Monday: * Four Iraqi soldiers were killed when a car bomb struck a checkpoint outside a US military base in Balad * Two Iraqi security officers were gunned down at a checkpoint in the town of Baiji * A suspected car bomb blew up in Baghdad near the heavily fortified Green Zone, the US' administrative base. There was no immediate confirmation of casualties * A policeman died in the northern city of Mosul when he tried to remove a booby-trapped beheaded body which then exploded. Monday's explosion near the offices of Mr Allawi's party, the Iraqi National Accord, occurred when a car bomber tried to ram through a police checkpoint on the road leading to the building. Several police vehicles were destroyed in the blast and at least 20 people were wounded. The National Accord's offices, located inside the heavily fortified Green Zone several hundred metres away, were not damaged. Mr Allawi is not believed to have been in the building at the time. The attack came a week after top Shia politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim was unhurt in a blast that killed 13 people at his party's offices in the capital. enditem -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
