IRAQ: New U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates arrives in Baghdad as renewed violence hits Ramadi and Baghdad

New U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday (December 20, 2006) to see for himself a war President George W. Bush has now said America is not winning. The former CIA director's visit follows a Pentagon report that said violence in Iraq was at an all-time high and comes as Bush weighs a new strategy in a war in which nearly 3,000 U.S. soldiers have died since the 2003 invasion. In a turnaround from past upbeat assessments on the Iraq war, Bush told the Washington Post in an interview posted on the newspaper's Web site: "We're not winning, we're not losing." Gates, who replaced Donald Rumsfeld, said on Monday failure in Iraq "would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come". He was one of a group that recommended the U.S. administration speed the U.S. training of Iraqi security forces to pave the way for a withdrawal of 130,000 American troops. He was scheduled to meet U.S. commanders and Iraqi political leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Only the day before, heavy clashes between U.S. forces and militants in the Sunni triangle city of Ramadi killed six civilians and wounded five others, hospital sources said. The clashes were concentrated mainly in the centre of the city of Ramadi, about 113 km west of Baghdad. Television footage showed empty streets in Ramadi and people leaving their shops and run for shelter as gunfire crackles echoed across the city. There is no word from the U.S. military on the clashes. And in the capital, a car bomb exploded in Baghdad's western district of Bayaa on Wednesday and killed at least 4 civilians and wounded eight. The blast sent pieces of the car bomb scattered all over the street. A man who was wounded by shrapnel in his back, lambasted the government. "What does the government do? Someone has to tell me what are they doing. They are keen to hold on to their seats, while the people are dying. Why? I am a citizen and I want nothing but safety. Where shall I go to get help. What does the government do? Where is the government?", he said. In a separate incidence, four civilians were killed and eight others wounded in a car bomb attack in a mainly Sunni-populated district in northern Baghdad, police said. They said that the car bomb exploded in the parking lot of an Interior Ministry office charged with issuing identity cards in Adhamiya district in northern Baghdad, police said. Iraq is gripped by tit-for-tat sectarian killings between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs once dominant under Saddam Hussein but now the backbone of the insurgency. Thousands have been killed in violence many Iraqis fear is pitching the country toward all-out communal civil war. Earlier, a suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into an Iraqi police checkpoint near Baghdad University, killing 11 people and wounding 31, an Interior Ministry source said. The source said there were university students among the dead and wounded following the 7:30 a.m. blast in the Jadriya district in the southwest of the capital. Police normally set up a checkpoint outside the university gates. Police checkpoints are a frequent target of militants fighting the U.S. military and the Shi'ite-led government.

ITN Source | December 21, 2006

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