Iraq Violence Surges; Rumsfeld Visits

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in the northern city of Mosul this morning that Iraqis, not Americans, would have to defeat the continuing insurgency.

He spoke on a surprise visit to the country one day after 14 Iraqi police officers were killed and 20 other bodies were found, part of a surge of violence since the Jan. 30 parliamentary election.

Rumsfeld addressed the troops at an airfield before departing for Baghdad, where he planned to meet with U.S. and Iraqi officials and review Iraq’s security forces.

He told troops that “you have shown that America is in fact a land of liberators, not a land of occupiers.” But, he added, “it is the Iraqis who have to over time defeat the insurgency.”

He spoke after presenting the Army Commendation Medal to a group of Iraqi and American soldiers.

Rumsfeld also visited a combat hospital in Mosul, where he spoke briefly with Sgt. Sean Ferguson from California, who was awarded his second Purple Heart after being shot in the hand by a sniper.

A day earlier in Salman Pak, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, insurgents attacked Iraqi policemen who came to look for weapons, showering them with machine-gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds, police said.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said 14 policemen were killed, 65 were wounded and six were missing after a two-hour gun battle. Four insurgents also were killed, it said. Elsewhere, the bodies of 20 Iraqi truck drivers were found dumped on a road.

Their hands were tied behind their backs and they had been shot, police Capt. Ahmed Ismail said. Some of the trucks were owned by the government, he said.

Five bodies in Iraqi national guard uniforms were found in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad.

Amid the violence, officials said Iraq would seal its borders between Feb. 17 and Feb. 22, in a move a government spokesman said was designed to coincide with the climax of Ashura, a major Shiite Muslim religious holiday.

Millions of Shiites travel from across the region to holy sites in Iraq for Ashura, during which many march and beat themselves in homage to the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in 680.

Suicide bombers attacked pilgrims last year in Baghdad and Karbala, and 180 people were killed.

“During these dates people will flood to Iraq from neighboring countries because of Ashura, which will make it difficult to ensure the safety of Iraqis and the visitors,” government spokesman Thaer Naqib said.