Rebels hit Baghdad as Rumsfeld visits

Two blasts killed up to 18 people, including an American soldier, in Baghdad yesterday hours before Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived to gauge efforts to calm violence ahead of January elections.

The United States and its allies in Iraq are engaged in a battle of wills with insurgents, Rumsfeld told US marines during an earlier stop at a desert airbase northwest of Baghdad.

"They are hoping to cause members of the coalition to decide that the pain and the ugliness and the difficulty of the task is simply too great," Rumsfeld said.

"They know they cannot defeat us militarily. But they are hoping they can win the test of wills. It's a battle of morale. It's a battle of perception," declared Rumsfeld, whose visit comes about three weeks before the US presidential election.

Rumsfeld, who held separate meetings with US commanders, US Ambassador John Negroponte and Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Baghdad, arrived a few hours after two blasts brought more bloodshed to the capital.

The first explosion was near the Oil Ministry and a nearby police academy soon after 7 a.m. (0400 GMT). Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said 17 people had been killed by a suicide car bomb that may have gone off before it reached the police academy, where recruits were lining up.

"Most of the dead were passersby, including seven women," Jihad said.

An Interior Ministry official said investigators were still trying to decide if the blast was caused by a bomb or a rocket. He put the death toll at six. Police put it at nine.

In eastern Baghdad, the US military said a suicide bomber attacked a US convoy, wounding an American soldier who later died. Two civilians were also wounded.

Earlier a US marine was killed by insurgents in the western Iraqi province of Al-Anbar on Saturday, where the troublespot of Fallujah is located, the military said Sunday.

"A marine assigned to the First Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action October 9 while conducting security and stability operations in the Al-Anbar province," it said in a statement.

The Interior Ministry official said the bomber's charred body was found inside the vehicle.

Insurgents and militants trying to undermine the US-backed government have mounted frequent bomb, rocket and mortar attacks on state buildings and Iraqi security forces.

The Pentagon and the interim government are eager to improve security throughout the country before the January polls for a national assembly and prevent insurgents from derailing them.

Credible elections began to look somewhat less improbable on Saturday after a fiercely anti-US Shia militia agreed to disarm in Baghdad and delegates from rebel-held Falluja said the Sunni Muslim city wanted to vote in the polls.

Falluja has been in the hands of anti-American insurgents since US forces failed to dislodge them in an April offensive.

The city is also said to be a sanctuary for foreign militants such as Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group beheaded British hostage Kenneth Bigley on Thursday.

A video posted on the Internet on Sunday showed Bigley appealing to the British government to meet his captors' demands just before masked men cut off his head with a knife.

"Here I am again (Tony) Blair and your government, very, very close to the end of my life," the four-minute tape showed the 62-year-old engineer saying.

"These people, their patience is wearing very, very thin and they are very serious people. Please, please give them what they require, the freedom of the women in Abu Ghraib prison. If you do this the problem is solved," said Bigley.

He was kidnapped on Sept. 16 with two Americans who were beheaded soon afterwards by Zarqawi's group, which demanded the release of women prisoners from US jails in Iraq.

The Mehdi Army militia led by Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr agreed to hand over weapons to Iraqi police from Monday under a deal that could end fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City district.

The government said the Sadr City accord was a good chance for "all misled armed groups in Iraq to rejoin civil society."

Sadr's militia has staged two uprisings against US and Iraqi forces this year. A Sunni insurgency still rages on.

Sadr City has seen nightly clashes with US forces, while US air strikes have attacked suspected Zarqawi targets in Falluja. Civilians have been among the casualties.

Karim al-Bakhati, negotiating for people in Sadr City, said US forces had promised to halt attacks on the Shi'ite slum.

Falluja delegates said the city wanted to take part in the elections and could accept the return of Iraqi security forces.

Insurgents in Falluja said on Sunday they were ready for a truce with the government if US troops stayed out of the city. Some said they were willing to hand over heavy weapons and allow Iraqi National Guards to come in.

The government has vowed to retake all rebel-held areas before the elections if other options fail. US and Iraqi forces have already stormed Samarra, north of Baghdad.