Insurgency

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The highest-ranking American official to set foot in Somalia in more than a decade returned from a trip there yesterday conceding that there were "significant problems" but saying that "we have to have faith in the people of Somalia." The official, Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, spent five hours in Baidoa, Somalia, meeting with top officials of the Somali transitional government, which has been struggling to gain control of the country.

WASHINGTON -- When three men wearing the black of the Mahdi Army came looking for him, Khalid Abboud al-Khafajee knew it was time to leave Iraq. For more than three years, the retired manufacturing clerk had served as an interpreter for the U.S. military. One Marine officer he assisted in Fallujah says that his guidance on dealing with local sheiks, imams and politicians was invaluable to the safety of his men. But for Abboud, working with the invaders meant that he had to move his family four times in three years.

WASHINGTON -- Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad, a key wartime goal toward which the United States has spent $4.2 billion dollars, won't be accomplished until the year 2013, U.S. officials said yesterday, in what others called a significant setback for the new U.S. initiatives to quell Iraq's bloody insurgency. Power outages in the Iraqi capital are frequent, leaving residents without electricity for an average of 17 or 18 hours a day. For most residents without personal generators, that means not just no lights but dead radios and televisions, heaters, washing machines and water pumps.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- For the second time in two days, suspected Sunni Arab insurgents targeted civilians yesterday with a crude chemical weapon: a bomb attached to chlorine gas canisters that killed two people, sickened 25 and injured eight others. The attack was the third in a month involving a combination of explosive devices and chlorine. All three attacks seem to have been poorly executed - burning the chemical agent rather than dispersing it - but Iraqi and U.S. officials said they see a pattern emerging, an apparent effort by insurgents to bring a new level of fear and havoc to Iraq as a new security plan for Baghdad takes shape.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Unlike so many deaths in this city these days, the passing of Ahmed Lami was remarkable not for its violent end but for its lack of bloodshed: He died of natural causes, at age 65. But even peaceful death has become a magnet for violence. As his Shiite Muslim family and friends gathered to mourn his passing yesterday afternoon under a tent in a middle-class, religiously mixed neighborhood on Palestine Street, a suicide bomber walked in, sat down and detonated his explosives, killing at least seven people and injuring 21 others.

WASHINGTON --Documents captured from Iraqi insurgents indicate that some of the recent fatal attacks against U.S. helicopters are the result of a carefully planned strategy to focus on downing coalition aircraft, one that U.S. officials say has been carried out by mounting coordinated assaults with machine guns, rockets and surface-to-air missiles. The documents, which are said to have been drafted by al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, show that the militants were preparing to "concentrate on the air force."

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- It was just after lunch yesterday when the surge arrived at Haidar Karam's doorstep. About 50 U.S. soldiers appeared and circled his northeast Baghdad neighborhood. A half-dozen Humvees arrived 15 minutes later. Snipers took up positions on rooftops. Troops stopped vehicles from moving. They were the leading edge of a Baghdad security plan called Operation Law and Order, part of what the Bush administration has dubbed a "surge" in U.S. troops in Iraq. After weeks of delay, the promised crackdown and troop increase were evident yesterday during a tour of neighborhoods throughout the war-wilted capital of 6 million people, where sectarian fighting kills an average of 100 residents a day. A U.S. officer approached Karam, handing the government clerk a piece of paper with a phone number and an e-mail address to contact if there was any trouble in his Shiite-dominated Shaab neighborhood.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush warned yesterday that fighting in Afghanistan is likely to flare this spring, and he urged a renewed commitment from NATO allies for additional troops if they are needed to battle insurgent Taliban fighters. In a speech delivered to an audience heavy with ambassadors and diplomats, Bush acknowledged that attacks and bombings increased sharply in the past year, making 2006 "the most violent year in Afghanistan since the liberation of the country" in 2001. But the president insisted that even as the United States is increasing its presence in Iraq, it is also willing and able to increase its commitment in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials from President Bush to a top general in Baghdad said yesterday that there was no solid evidence that top officials in Tehran had ordered deadly weapons to be sent to Iraq for use against Americans soldiers, backing away from claims made at a Baghdad presentation by military and intelligence officials earlier this week. But Bush continued to maintain an aggressive posture toward Tehran, insisting that elite Iranian Quds Forces operatives were supplying weapons to insurgents in Iraq.

WASHINGTON -- First, U.S. military helicopter pilots in Iraq tried flying low and fast, hoping to elude heat-seeking missiles fired by insurgents. The insurgents responded with heavy weapons such as machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and the loss rate of American helicopters soared. So the pilots went high -- and insurgents replied with lethal surface-to-air missiles. A Marine Corps CH-46 helicopter was lost yesterday 20 miles northeast of Baghdad. It was the fifth helicopter that has gone down in Iraq in three weeks.