Iraqis on Council to Get Guards

Concerned about imminent terrorist attacks and other violence, the U.S.-led occupation authority moved Tuesday to hire scores of security guards for the new Iraqi Governing Council and bolster the authority’s already extensive security network to protect its own top staff.

Both actions are part of the stepped-up security after last week’s car bombing outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad that killed 17, a development that suggested a new phase in the months-long resistance campaign that has killed dozens of U.S. soldiers and claimed the lives of Iraqis working with the occupation forces.

Another U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday, and two more were wounded.

“We believe we have a significant terrorist threat in the country, which is new,” said L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator. “We take this very seriously.”

The safety of the 25 council members, who personify the U.S. pledge to eventually install an Iraqi government, is of particular concern.

“Given the Iraqi security environment, these individuals are under great personal risk and require protection,” declared the authority in a solicitation for instructors to train 120 Iraqis for what it called the council’s Personal Security Detail.

The occupation leadership also expanded its own security. Hundreds of yards of razor-sharp concertina wire and concrete blockades were set up to barricade the already heavily fortified conference center complex where many of the authority’s meetings and news conferences are held.

Reporters, required to arrive 90 minutes ahead of a briefing by Bremer, underwent two body searches before a third check by heavily armed soldiers, equipped with bomb-sniffing dogs -- a more intensive procedure than the White House demanded after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

It was the second day of such high security. On Monday, the same measures were taken for the first news conference by Ibrahim Jafari, the Governing Council president.

For its own protection, the council has been all but invisible since it was appointed last month -- a victory in itself for the anti-American forces.

The council works cloistered in a building set back more than half a mile from the road. Visitors can enter only if they are met by a council member and after they have been checked by U.S. soldiers.

Once inside the complex, they must drive past a second American checkpoint, stop their cars and wait while a soldier removes a set of road spikes.

In calling for bodyguard trainers, the coalition outlined an array of threats facing the council members.

The request for 120 bodyguards to protect 25 people suggests either around-the-clock coverage or multiple guards for certain members.

The instructors’ program, according to the authority’s Web site, will cover reaction to “attack, terrorism ... threat assessment, hostage situations, general security to include residence, office, vehicle and travel escort, reconnaissance and map reading ... weapons training, anti-ambush drills, unarmed conflict, explosive awareness” and other information.

Despite the presence of nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and the half a dozen U.S. companies here training a new Iraqi army and police force, the document added: “There is no established pool of quality trained bodyguards currently available in Iraq.” The training is to be completed by October.

The heightened threat appears to be coming from several quarters.

Since U.S. officials declared the major fighting over May 1, guerrillas have escalated their attacks, targeting Iraqis as well as Americans.

The violence has been centered in the “Sunni triangle” where Saddam Hussein’s support was based and where anti-Americanism has been most open. At least 58 American soldiers have been killed, and the authority said some of the insurgents could include elite forces from the former Baathist regime.

Furthermore, Bremer estimated that as many as 200 operatives from the extremist group Ansar al Islam have slipped back into the country since May 1. In other recent interviews, Bremer said that Al Qaeda network operatives as well as Iranian radicals are thought to be operating in Iraq.

An official with one of the two Kurdish political parties that control northern Iraq reported that their forces had captured 50 suspected Ansar al Islam members in the northern city of Halabja on Tuesday morning in a joint operation with U.S. forces.

Mohammed Tawfik, an official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the detainees were of “different nationalities” and were not permanent residents of Halabja, a town about 40 miles southeast of Sulaymaniyah and 15 miles west of the Iranian border.

Tawfik indicated that the detainees remained under control of the Kurdish authorities. It was unclear whether they would be tried or turned over to the U.S.

Before invading Iraq, the Bush administration alleged that Ansar al Islam, which had a few camps in northern Iraq near the Iranian border, was a link between Al Qaeda and Hussein. However, the group’s main aim seems to have been battling the secular Kurdish government in northern Iraq. In March, the group was swept from its camps in a U.S.-Kurdish campaign involving warplanes and special forces. An estimated 250 Ansar members were killed, and others are believed to have fled to Iran.

In addition to Ansar, Bremer said, U.S. officials are tracking foreign terrorist groups that may have entered Iraq in recent weeks. He made a distinction between the increased risk of terrorism in Iraq and attacks on U.S. forces here, which he blamed on “bitter-enders” loyal to Hussein.

On Tuesday, one U.S. soldier was killed and two injured in an attack on a 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment convoy west of Baghdad. According to a U.S. military spokeswoman, the convoy was traveling near Ramadi about 10:30 a.m. when it hit three “improvised explosive devices” that had been strung together on the road.

Resistance forces appear to be increasingly making use of makeshift bombs in their attacks on U.S. forces. Lt. Col. Bill MacDonald in Tikrit said Tuesday that in raids this week, soldiers detained 14 people, including two suspected of organizing resistance and deploying improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs in military parlance.

Those detained included a Republican Guard officer and one of the deposed dictator’s bodyguards. Soldiers also confiscated 180 artillery shells, 50 tank rounds and three mortar rounds at five different sites.

“We think these seizures are important because they are using these artillery and mortar rounds in the IEDs,” said MacDonald, who added that the devices are sometimes equipped with fuses and other times with radio controls, enabling them to be triggered from up to 300 yards away.

The raids, part of an action dubbed Operation Ivy Lightning, were focused around the remote towns of Ain Lalin and Quara Tapa. According to the U.S. military, intelligence reports suggest that former regime leaders may have fled to the area after aggressive operations in the Tikrit, Baqubah and Balad regions.

Meanwhile, Bremer said the investigation into Thursday’s embassy bombing was moving “very quickly over the last 48 hours,” but he said that officials still did not know who was responsible.

FBI agents on Monday wrapped up the tedious on-site search for clues, removing the charred remains of some of the nine damaged cars with a crane, including one vehicle that was thrown onto the roof of a nearby house. A piece of a guardrail fence landed on a house roof 100 yards away.

Under the protection of the 1st Armored Division and Iraqi police, FBI agents cataloged the debris and moved it to another location, where it will be analyzed for explosives residue.

“That will help tell us where the [bombers] were trained and who taught them,” FBI agent Thomas Fuentes said at the embassy. “Different groups have different techniques.”

The FBI, which arrived on the scene the day of the blast, has been joined by investigators from U.S. Customs, the CIA and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Fuentes said.

The FBI does not believe that the attack was a suicide mission because witnesses say they saw two men exit the vehicle that contained the bomb -- a minivan -- before it exploded, Fuentes said.

A Jordanian Embassy guard has told investigators that a letter was left at the embassy gate a day before the explosion, warning of an impending attack, according to Iraqi Col. Raad Abbas Jasim, head of the Khudra police station, which is assisting in the investigation.

The note’s contents have not been disclosed.

*

Times staff writer Chris Kraul in Tikrit and special correspondent Salar Jaff contributed to this report.