IRAQ: The US sought to regain the initiative in its battle with the increasingly well-organised Iraqi resistance yesterday by announcing $1 million rewards for 12 of Saddam Hussein's closest allies still on the run.
Officials of the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad said the money would be paid to anybody who gave information that led to their death or capture.
This tactic has worked for the Americans before: Saddam's two sons Uday and Qusay were killed when troops surrounded the house in which they were staying. Information on their whereabouts had been provided by an associate who was tempted by the reward.
The US has already offered a $10 million reward for Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the 13th remaining fugitive and Iraq's most wanted man after Saddam's arrest in a hole near Tikrit more than a fortnight ago. Mr Douri was Saddam's Baath party deputy, and a close confidante.
Some officials believe he is co-ordinating the revolt against the occupation. American troops have captured or killed 42 people on the original list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis shown on the "pack of cards" compiled by American intelligence agencies before the war.
Yesterday a US soldier and two Iraqi children were killed by a roadside bomb in a crowded Baghdad shopping district soon after 10 a.m. Another US soldier died after his convoy was attacked west of Baghdad.Five other US soldiers and nine Iraqis - an interpreter and eight members of the civil defence corps - were wounded. Another soldier was killed and three wounded near Falluja.
The explosion in Baghdad came after a big assault by the Iraqi resistance in the city of Kerbala on Saturday, which killed two Thai and four Bulgarian soldiers, and 12 Iraqis. The guerrillas attacked with mortars, machine guns and cars packed with explosives.
Three suicide bombers were shot dead before they could blow themselves up, but a fourth managed to ram into a Bulgarian military base, a spokesman for the Polish-led multinational force in the city said.
The attack was apparently meant to demoralise the smaller countries that have sent troops to Iraq. But Thailand said yesterday that it had no plans to pull its troops out, despite the deaths of two of its soldiers, the first Thai troops killed in combat since the Vietnam war.
Meanwhile, problems mounted for British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair as the US official running Iraq rejected his claim that evidence of Saddam's hidden weapons laboratories had been unearthed.
In a Christmas message to troops, Mr Blair said the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories".
But Mr Paul Bremer said that simply was not true, although he did not realise Mr Blair had made the claim when it was put to him.
In fact, it sounded like a "red herring" put about by someone opposed to military action to undermine the coalition, Mr Bremer said. He was forced to row back when told the claims were made by America's staunchest ally Mr Blair.
Britain's former international development secretary, Ms Clare Short, yesterday renewed her criticism of Mr Blair's actions over Iraq.
Ms Short, who belatedly quit the Cabinet over the war, predicted Mr Blair would not lead Labour into the next election and called on him to stand down for the honour of the country. - (Guardian Service, PA)