Iraqis fire grenades at US Army patrols

No one was injured in the grenade attacks in Khaldiyah and Habaniyah, according to the overnight intelligence report distributed to Army commanders.

Military officials said they had no information about reports that an airstrike on a three-vehicle convoy fleeing Iraq near the Syrian border last Wednesday killed top officials in the government of former president Saddam Hussein, perhaps including Saddam or his sons.

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The Washington Post quoted defense officials as saying that DNA tests were being conducted on the victims, and the Pentagon was closely following the results of the strike by a Special Operations forces AC-130 gunship.

But they added that so far there was no evidence that either Saddam or one of his sons, Uday and Qusay, was hit. They are the top three on the US list of most-wanted officials in Iraq, and coalition officials say the lack of evidence about their fate is fueling resistance to the occupation within Iraq.

On Sunday, Iraq made its first foray back into the international oil market since the war, with the loading of one million barrels of crude onto a Turkish tanker at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

But sabotage and looting of the 600-mile pipeline from the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk to Ceyhan delayed the flow of freshly pumped oil - the key to reconstructing an economy devastated by sanctions and war. Pumping was supposed to have begun Sunday.

Information Radio, operated by the U.S.-led coalition, broadcast an appeal Monday for Iraqis to help police the pipeline and report the location of looted equipment. It said Iraq was losing $50 million a week needed for the nation's reconstruction due to delays caused by sabotage and theft.

In Ramadi, a patrol of two tanks and four Humvees came under small arms fire on Sunday, and the patrol saw a young girl running away with an AK-47 assault rifle, said Capt. Burris Wollsieffer, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The bullets landed harmlessly in the dirt around the vehicles, he said on Monday.

The troops followed the girl home and found the rifle wrapped in a red dress propped in a corner. Three men in the household were taken for interrogation, but the troops allowed the girl to remain at home when they learned her age. They also seized $1,500 in cash and $1,000 in Iraqi dinars, the officer said.

None of the troops saw who fired the weapon, although they found no other suspects in the area other than the young girl.

"It's just weird. It's totally unconventional," said Wollsieffer, when asked about the rising number of ambushes on his forces in Ramadi, a town where resistance to the occupation has been high. "It's guerrilla warfare."

Two senior army officers met Monday with a prominent Islamic cleric, Abdullah al-Annay who preaches in two Ramadi mosques, to ask him to tone down his anti-American sermons, said the captain.

"If he keeps this kind of speech going, they are just going to attack us more and more," said Wollsieffer, whose regiment has lost 10 men - more than half the 18 men reported killed from hostile action - since May 1 when major combat was declared over.

The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment held a moving memorial service Sunday for Staff Sgt. William T. Latham, who died four days earlier in a Washington hospital from shrapnel wounds suffered during a May 19 raid at a suspected arms market.