US military deaths in Iraq hit 2,500

By Fredrik Dahl and Omar al-Ibadi

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The number of U.S. military deaths in
Iraq has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said on Thursday, and the
military warned it expected the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq
to continue the bloody tactics of his predecessor.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have also been killed since the
U.S.-led invasion more than three years ago to overthrow Saddam
Hussein, igniting an insurgency by his once-dominant Sunni Arab
minority that is showing little sign of easing.

The U.S. military said it believed the real identity of al
Qaeda’s new leader in Iraq was Egyptian-born Abu Ayyub al-Masri
and that it expected him to adopt the same methods as his
predecessor Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a June 7 air raid.

On a day when at least 24 Iraqis lost their lives in five
separate attacks, an official in Baghdad said the security
forces had seized documents giving key information about the
militant group’s network and its leaders in Iraq.

“We believe this is the beginning of the end of al Qaeda in
Iraq,” national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said.

Rubaie told Reuters earlier this year the insurgency
against the U.S.-backed, Shi’ite-led government had been
defeated. But violence has continued to rage, killing hundreds
of people since.

In Thursday’s bloodiest attack, gunmen stopped a minibus
taking 10 laborers to work in the town of Baquba, forced them
to get off and killed them, a police source said.

Reuters Television footage showed the dead men lying on
stretchers in blood-soaked clothes. “Is this Islam? Is this
Islam?” the father of one victim wailed.

Baquba is the capital of Diyala, a religiously mixed
province north of Baghdad that has seen many gruesome attacks.

Further west, attackers opened fire on a Sunni Arab mosque
in a small town near Tikrit, Saddam’s home city, killing four
worshippers and wounding up to 20 others.

In the northern town of Tal Afar, which President Bush has
held up as an example of progress in Iraq, three roadside bombs
killed five Iraqi soldiers.

In Washington, the Pentagon said 18,490 U.S. troops had
been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003. On an
average day, about two U.S. military personnel are killed.

“It’s important to remember that there is a mission, and
there is a greater good which sometimes necessitates tremendous
sacrifice,” said Army Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, deputy director
for regional operations for the military’s Joint Staff which
formerly commanded U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

The United States has 130,000 troops in Iraq. Bush has
resisted setting a timetable for their withdrawal, saying it
depends on the situation on the ground. Rubaie said all foreign
forces may be gone by mid-2008, as Iraq takes over security.

SECURITY CRACKDOWN

About 50,000 Iraqi troops, supported by more than 7,000
U.S.-led troops, launched a security crackdown in Baghdad this
week aimed at putting further pressure on insurgents.

The challenge in restoring stability was highlighted by a
car bomb in front of a bakery that killed at least three people
in the southwestern Saydiya district on Thursday.

Analysts say al Qaeda militants, though behind some of the
bloodiest attacks, only make up about five percent of
insurgents, which are dominated by Saddam loyalists.

“The government is on the attack now … to destroy al
Qaeda and to finish this terrorist organization in Iraq,”
Rubaie said.

He added that some documents were found in an al Qaeda
hideout where Zarqawi had been, but did not make clear whether
this was the place where the Jordanian militant was killed.

A copy of one of the documents, whose authenticity could
not be independently verified, did not mention al Qaeda or give
specific information about any planned attacks.

Instead, it suggested ways insurgents could counter U.S.
raids and propaganda, for example by infiltrating Iraq’s armed
forces, recruiting new members and manufacturing more weapons.

It also said the best way to get out of “the crisis” was to
foster conflict between the United States and another country,
like Shi’ite Iran, and by stirring U.S.-Shi’ite tension in
Iraq.

Al Qaeda has vowed to fight on and its new leader in Iraq,
which it has named as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, vowed in a Web
statement on Tuesday to avenge Zarqawi’s death.

The name rang few bells and the U.S. military said the new
leader was probably Masri, who it says trained in Afghanistan
and formed al Qaeda’s first cell in Baghdad.

(Additional reporting by Will Dunham in Washington and by
Michael Georgy and Ibon Villelabeitia in Iraq)