Pentagon shifts more troops to Iraq

WASHINGTON — Concerned about escalating violence as Iraq struggles to form a new government, the U.S. military said Wednesday it has sent several hundred troops with tanks and other armor from Kuwait to the Baghdad area.

Also Wednesday, at least four and perhaps as many as 13 people were killed in a U.S. military operation against a house where insurgent collaborators were believed to have taken refuge.

Family members and local police officials said that at least 11 people, including five children and four women, were killed in the attack, according to reports from the area. The U.S. military said in a statement that four persons were killed in the operation. The target of the operation, who was not identified, was captured, the statement said.

U.S. military spokesman Barry Johnson said "there is a discrepancy" between the military account and the eyewitnesses. "I don't have an answer yet" to explain it, he said, adding that the military was investigating. In other violence Wednesday, two people were killed and 10 were wounded in an explosion inside a photography shop in Baqoubah, where a roadside bomb also killed the commander of an Iraqi police SWAT team, who was identified as Lt. Alaa Jalil.

Reuters, quoting an unidentified police source, said 25 bodies were found in Baghdad on Wednesday.

There were other scattered reports of violence Wednesday in the capital that left five dead, including a U.S. soldier who was killed Wednesday night southwest of Baghdad by indirect fire, bringing to 2,311 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died in the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.

Moving an Army battalion of about 700 soldiers from Kuwait is part of a broader plan, dubbed "Scales of Justice," that includes the repositioning of several thousand U.S. and Iraqi security forces inside Iraq, officials said Wednesday.

It is the first time extra troops have been sent since December's parliamentary election, which was followed by a period of political wrangling and a wave of sectarian violence since the Feb. 22 bombing of a venerated Shiite mosque in Samarra. Iraq has been hit by a particularly bloody round of sectarian violence since the bombings, with more than 100 people killed, most of them shot but others hanged and suffocated, early this week in Baghdad alone.

At 8 p.m., a curfew was imposed against driving vehicles in the capital until 4 p.m. today, to protect against possible insurgent attacks related to the opening of Parliament, scheduled for this morning.

The national Council of Representatives was elected Dec. 15, but its first session has been delayed by protracted negotiations over the formation of a government. Continuing divisions among lawmakers suggested today's opening session of the legislature may do little more than swear in members elected in landmark elections three months earlier.

Under the constitution, the largest parliamentary bloc, controlled by Shiites, has the right to nominate the prime minister. The Shiites named the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Politicians involved in the negotiations have said part of the Shiite bloc, those aligned with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, would like to see al-Jaafari ousted but fear the consequences, given his backing from radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and al-Sadr's thousands-strong Mahdi Army.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has sought to capitalize on the division among the Shiites by forming a coalition with Sunni politicians and some secularists to increase pressure against al-Jaafari's candidacy.

Monday marks the culmination of the Shiite holiday of Ashura, the end of mourning that marks the death of the grandson of the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. The holiday has been marred by bloodshed in past years.

The battalion moved from Kuwait is part of a brigade of the 1st Armored Division that was placed there late last year on a short-notice deployment to Iraq in case commanders needed extra firepower.

The decision to add the armored unit from Kuwait, though meant to be temporary, is in contrast to the Bush administration's hopes of substantially reducing the U.S. military presence in Iraq this year. There now are about 133,000 U.S. troops there.

It comes amid Bush administration efforts to persuade the U.S. public that the war effort is succeeding. Opinion polls show faltering public support.

Compiled from The Associated Press, The Washington Post and Knight Ridder Newspapers