US troops move to stamp out Iraqi resistance

Soldiers from the First Battalion of the 124th Infantry Regiment staged the operation shortly after sunrise in a suburb of the city of Ramadi, around 100 km west of Baghdad in a region where US forces have frequently come under fire.

Officers said they aimed to capture five men belonging to the Fedayeen paramilitary force, which put up some of the fiercest resistance to US troops during the invasion and has been blamed for continuing attacks since Saddam Hussein's fall.

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The raid, involving several hundred soldiers, was part of Operation Desert Scorpion, launched on June 15. It aims to crack down on guerrillas with combat missions and to befriend civilians by helping with aid and reconstruction projects.

One unit of soldiers dragged half a dozen Iraqi men from their homes as women wailed in protest.

Officers were checking to see if the men were the suspects they sought. The troops also confiscated a handful of weapons and a computer hard disk.

A final tally of the suspects and weapons seized was not immediately available.

Paul Bremer, Iraq's US ruler, has said elements loyal to Saddam are exploiting their chief's uncertain fate to intimidate Iraqis, and attacking US troops to destabilize the country.

Seventeen American soldiers have been killed in hostile action in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1. No Iraqi death toll is available.

AFP adds: President George W. Bush warned Saturday that the US forces in Iraq face a future of "danger and sacrifice" before the country is secure.

Bush, in his weekly radio address, also reaffirmed his determination that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction would be found.

"Making Iraq secure is vitally important for both Iraqi citizens and our own forces," Bush said after a week in which a growing number of US military dead in Iraq began to raise questions in Congress.

"The men and women of our military face a continuing risk of danger and sacrifice in Iraq.

"Dangerous pockets of the old regime remain loyal to it and they, along with their terrorist allies, are behind deadly attacks designed to kill and intimidate coalition forces and innocent Iraqis."

The United States invaded Iraq on March 20 and Saddam's regime in Baghdad fell 10 weeks ago.

But in the time since then no chemical or biological weapons programs have been recovered. Amidst allegations that intelligence on Iraq's weapons was overstated to bolster the case for war, the lack of evidence has caused major political problems for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and to a lesser extent the Bush administration.

"As we establish order and justice in Iraq, we also continue to pursue Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction," Bush went on.

"Military and intelligence officials are interviewing scientists with knowledge of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and are poring over hundreds of thousands of documents.

"For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world. And in the regime's final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned.

"Yet all who know the dictator's history agree that he possessed chemical and biological weapons and that he used chemical weapons in the past.

"The intelligence services of many nations concluded that he had illegal weapons and the regime refused to provide evidence they had been destroyed. We are determined to discover the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."