'Organized Resistance' Worries US in Iraq

Picture of Resistance Remains Murky; Two More Soldiers Killed in Ambushes

BAGHDAD, July 10 — U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that Iraqis loyal to former president Saddam Hussein may be organizing guerrilla operations against occupation forces and financing them with money set aside before the war, according to senior commanders and field officers here.

Officials reported today that two U.S. soldiers were killed in ambushes on Wednesday, raising to 32 the number of Americans killed in attacks since May 1, when President Bush declared major hostilities over. The increasing pace, lethality and sophistication of assaults on U.S. forces in Iraq have led many officers and soldiers to suspect that Iraqis opposed to the occupation may have spent the weeks after the fall of Baghdad organizing the resistance campaign and that regional or national command-and-control groups could be directing it.

"Saddam talked about letting us into Baghdad and trying to break the will of the coalition," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S.-led ground forces here, said today. "That possibility is out there."

First Sgt. William Taylor, a member of an Army reconnaissance team based near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, noted that "there was a lull after the heavy combat operations. Now they've probably gotten their cells together. The people we're interdicting now are actively recruiting and supplying money."

Several days ago, for example, soldiers near Tikrit — Hussein's traditional power base — stopped a vehicle that tried to run a checkpoint. They discovered three members of the paramilitary force known as Saddam's Fedayeen armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, said Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division. They were carrying $40,000 in new $100 bills and two large plastic bags of dinars, the Iraqi currency.

U.S. field commanders have intensified efforts to target local or regional leaders who they believe are coordinating, arming and financing attacks, and senior U.S. officials are attempting to identify possible national organizers, according to top commanders and field officers. But Sanchez and other military leaders expressed frustration that they have been unable to develop a precise picture of a resistance organization or its possible levels of coordination.

Military officials said assaults in recent days have been carried out by skilled urban assassins, by mine specialists who have concealed explosives in potholes and beneath the shoulders of asphalt roads traveled by U.S. convoys, and by fighters who have staged well-coordinated ambushes. While commanders stressed that the majority of attacks have missed their targets and caused no casualties and little damage, they said the successful ones have shown clear evidence of sophistication.

"There are some professional assassins operating in Baghdad," Sanchez said. "There is absolutely no question in my mind."

Sanchez described the gunman who shot a U.S. soldier dead at point-blank range on the Baghdad University campus last Sunday as "a well-trained soldier who knows how to identify a target, how to strike very quickly and escape."

An attack last month at the U.S. civilian and military affairs office in Tikrit was organized and "well-planned," according to Maj. Mike Silverman, operations officer for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, a unit of the 4th Infantry Division. He said several Iraqis fired rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles from rooftops in an attack coordinated from two directions. One U.S. soldier was killed and seven were injured in the ambush, he said.

On Saturday, an estimated 50 Iraqis ambushed a military patrol on a highway south of the city of Balad, 55 miles northwest of Baghdad, in three separate firefights that spanned eight hours. No U.S. soldiers died, but 11 Iraqis were killed, military officials said.

In Wednesday's fatal attacks, a soldier from the 3rd Corps Support Command was killed when his convoy was ambushed at about 6:30 p.m. near the city of Mahmudiyah, 15 miles south of Baghdad. Four hours later, a 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed and another wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at their convoy near the city of Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, according to military spokesmen.

American military officers say they are particularly troubled by the large caches of weaponry and stashes of cash that soldiers have discovered in recent weeks inside houses or buried in gardens. Increasingly, some commanders are concentrating on finding Hussein loyalists — including the former president's senior bodyguards and mid-level aides — who may be returning to their home areas to hand out the money, recruit gunmen and assemble weapons caches.

"We're focusing on the ones trying to organize," said Capt. Desmond Jones of Wetumpka, Ala., who heads a 1st Brigade reconnaissance team. "We're trying to keep them off balance because we know they're trying to organize attacks."

In an effort to sort out the organizational levels and potential leaders of emerging resistance cells, military intelligence and surveillance teams are attempting to monitor Saddam's Fedayeen and other military units, Islamic militant organizations and remnants of Hussein's Baath Party.

Military surveillance teams in the Tikrit area have reported numerous examples of efforts by the Fedayeen to organize local fighters. Soldiers said they could identify Fedayeen troops by the tattoo on their hands that depicts a heart pierced by an arrow.

For several days, surveillance teams tracked a group of Fedayeen militiamen who met almost every day at 6 p.m. at a traffic circle in Tikrit. And armed Fedayeen fighters on motorcycles have been spotted tailing — and sometimes firing on — U.S. troop convoys with increasing frequency, according to the 1st Brigade's Silverman.

The 1st Brigade's commander, Col. James Hickey, said he believed that coordinated, successful attacks remain the exception rather than the rule. "A lot of guys being paid simply don't know what they're doing," Hickey said. Rounds from rocket-propelled grenade launchers "are just bouncing off the tanks and Bradleys," the American fighting vehicles.

Hickey said the attacks have not stopped military operations or reconstruction projects but have unsettled many Iraqis. In recent weeks, assaults by resistance forces have expanded to target Iraqis working with U.S. soldiers on projects to rebuild Iraq.

In the city of Ramadi, about an hour's drive west of Baghdad, several dozen Iraqi police officers marched on the mayor's office today and threatened to quit if U.S. troops did not leave their police station by this weekend, according to wire service reports. They said the American presence endangered their lives. Last weekend, seven police recruits were killed and dozens wounded when a bomb exploded as they walked from their graduation ceremony to the station house.