WASHINGTON — The Army is now planning to keep at least 120,000 soldiers in Iraq for the next two years to train and fight with Iraqi forces against insurgents, a senior Army general said yesterday.

"We are planning for what's the most probable case. A worst-case [scenario] would be a lot more" Army troops, said Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, Army deputy chief of staff for operations.

Lovelace stressed, however, that the number of Army troops in Iraq could fall depending on the effectiveness of more-intense U.S. training of the Iraqis.

If the Army does not cut its force in the months ahead, it is unlikely that the U.S. military can reduce its overall presence from 150,000 to 138,000 by the middle of this year, as originally planned.

Bush expected to ask for $80 billion more

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will ask Congress, perhaps as early as today, for about $80 billion in new funds for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration and congressional officials said yesterday.

The package would be in addition to $25 billion already approved for 2005.

The administration request, while expected, is significant not only because it illustrates the extent of military needs in Iraq but because it's likely to affect other big-ticket legislative initiatives.

Al-Zarqawi aide held, admits to bombings

BAGHDAD, Iraq — An Abu Musab al-Zarqawi lieutenant has been arrested and confessed to masterminding most of the car bombings in Baghdad, including the bloody 2003 assault on the U.N. headquarters in the capital, interim-government authorities said yesterday.

Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, "confessed to building approximately 75 percent of the car bombs used in attacks in Baghdad" since the Iraq war began, said Thaer al-Naqib, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

A government statement said Al-Jaaf was taken into custody Jan. 15 and was responsible for 32 car bombings, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters that killed the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 other people.

It said he also built the car bomb used to attack a shrine in the Shiite holy city of Najaf that killed more than 85 people. There was no way of verifying Al-Jaaf's admissions or the government's claims. One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cast doubt on the significance of the arrest and said its announcement was a bid to boost the government's popularity before this weekend's election.

Report says Iraqis are still being tortured

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human-rights organization.

Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Saddam, are "committing systematic torture and other abuses" of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released today.

Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi "appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit," the report concludes.

A spokesman for Allawi declined to comment.

Bombing wounds 10; gunmen kill judge, son

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide bomber blew up a carload of explosives yesterday outside the headquarters of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, wounding at least 10 people.

Allawi was not in the area.

This morning, gunmen assassinated a senior judge, Qais Hashim Shameri, and his son as they left their home in eastern Baghdad.