Iraqi guerrillas target more civilians

BAGHDAD, Iraq — With U.S. troops heavily armed and bunkered behind concrete and razor wire, guerrillas are pointing their guns at softer targets such as Iraqi police and civilians, U.S. military and civilian officials said Tuesday.

American officials expect attacks on Iraqis working with the coalition to surge as the U.S.-led administration begins handing power to local leaders.

After dark, three large explosions shook the center of Baghdad from the city’s western half. The blasts triggered a warning siren in the "Green Zone" housing the U.S. headquarters.

"The security situation has changed," said top U.S. administrator Paul Bremer at a press conference with Gen. John Abizaid, the chief of the U.S. Central Command.

Bremer said coalition troops would do their best to protect upcoming leadership debates and caucuses.

Abizaid said the number of daily attacks on coalition forces dropped by about half over the past two weeks.

But another U.S. military official, Col. William Darley, said attacks peaked at more than 40 a day about two weeks ago and have since dropped to about 30 a day — about the same as in October and well over the number in August and September.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his top military adviser said Tuesday they have evidence the Arab television news organizations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya cooperated with Iraqi insurgents to witness and videotape attacks on American troops.

Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both indicated that U.S. forces in Iraq had collected more than just circumstantial evidence that one or both of the Arab news organizations might have cooperated with the attackers.

Neither Rumsfeld nor Myers provided details of any evidence.

On a related subject, Rumsfeld cited a long list of statistics on the results of recent U.S. efforts to defeat the insurgency, including a rare reference to numbers of opposition fighters killed.

"(U.S.-led forces) captured some 1,200 enemy forces and killed 40 to 50 enemy fighters and wounded some 25 to 30," Rumsfeld said. "That’s a one-week snapshot, but it provides a sense of the determined offensive pressure which the coalition is applying against the enemy."

The Pentagon has generally refused to provide numbers of opposition forces killed.

Meanwhile, one of four American military police charged with beating prisoners of war at a detention camp in Iraq said Tuesday: "We were doing our jobs. … It is war. It is not back home where everybody is safe."

Shawna Edmondson, a 24-year-old Army reservist, accepted a demotion and a discharge rather than face a court-martial, and returned to her hometown in northeastern Pennsylvania last week.

Three other members of Edmondson’s military police unit refused to accept a plea bargain and currently are on restricted duty in Kuwait.

Fellow soldiers testified that the four Pennsylvania reservists punched and kicked prisoners who were being brought to an American camp in southern Iraq on May 12. One prisoner suffered a broken nose.