Iraq Notebook
U.S. embassy staff in Iraq to be this country's largest

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The bulk of the U.S. staff will continue to be headquartered in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace in Baghdad. But to prevent the potential psychological fallout from staying in the headquarters of the previous dictatorship, the new embassy will officially be in a building not far from the "Green Zone" of Baghdad, where the Coalition Provisional Authority operates.

The embassy, however, will have nominal use.

Over the next two months, the State Department will be intensively recruiting to staff the U.S. Embassy. Many on the staff of L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, are young, comparatively inexperienced in the Middle East, non-Arabic speakers and political appointees rather than career Foreign Service officers.

Some have already left or plan to do so before occupation ends to work on the president's re-election campaign, according to U.S. officials.

"There will be a fairly dramatic shift of personnel over the next six months," the U.S. official said.

"It can't be precipitous and happen all at once."

The U.S. Embassy in Egypt has a larger presence, more than 7,000 personnel. But they include many nondiplomats from other U.S. agencies, including, for example, two members of the Library of Congress who collect foreign books.

British assaulted eight Iraqis, one of whom died, paper says

LONDON — Eight young Iraqis arrested in the southern Iraqi town of Basra were assaulted by British soldiers, and one of them died of his injuries, the British newspaper Independent said in today's edition.

Baha Mousa's body was returned to his family covered in bruises and with his nose broken, after he and seven other men were arrested by British forces in September and held in military custody for three days, the paper said.

British military authorities offered Mousa's family $8,000 in compensation, providing they were not held responsible for his death, but his relatives planned to take Britain's Ministry of Defense to court, the paper said.

A Ministry of Defense spokeswoman declined to give details about the case. "There is an ongoing military police investigation into a death that we had in custody," she said.

Town's residents say U.S. killed four people during raid

HADITHAH, Iraq — Hundreds of residents of this town northwest of Baghdad protested yesterday, saying U.S. soldiers had raided the town overnight and killed four people. A cameraman for Associated Press Television News filmed four shroud-covered bodies and one person in a hospital who was injured by a gunshot.

Residents said the four died in the U.S. raid, but there was no way to immediately verify the claim. The military had no immediate comment.

The soldiers were in armored vehicles and "targeted three houses — my sister's house, my uncle's and my own," said Abdel Meguid Awad, a resident.

Also ...

The Reuters news agency, using estimates by human-rights groups and independent groups monitoring the war, said 13,000 to 16,000 Iraqis have been killed in hostile action since the war began March 20. It said civilians accounted for 8,000 to 10,000 of those deaths. The U.S. military says it does not keep track of Iraqi deaths. ... The U.S. military shelled the southern edge of Baghdad overnight Friday to root out insurgents believed to be launching mortar shells.

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