BAGHDAD, Aug 29: America’s top military man in Iraq said on Friday he wanted more Muslim peacekeepers and better intelligence rather than US troop reinforcements to tackle the hit-and-run attacks still plaguing occupation forces.

Gen John Abizaid’s comments came after a British soldier was killed in southern Iraq and more US troops wounded as resistance to the US-led occupation continued unabated five months after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

European countries opened debate on helping with the peacekeeping effort after Washington said it might hand some responsibilities over to the United Nations, with France calling for a “real international force” in Iraq.

“We’ve got to get more of an Iraqi face on the security establishment and we need to have more international participation in the international coalition force,” US Central Command chief Abizaid told The New York Times.

His comments came amid a growing realization in the United States that rebuilding Iraq will be more difficult and more costly than had been forseen and that more US troops may be needed to improve all-round security.

However, Gen Abizaid said he favoured seeing more peacekeepers from countries like Turkey and Pakistan and accelerating the training of a new Iraqi army to counter the image of a US-dominated occupation.

He said both issues would be discussed during a major strategy review by top US military and civilian officials in Baghdad next week.

An undetermined number of US soldiers were wounded Friday when a bomb went off as they drove through the flashpoint town of Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, witness Qusay Ismail al-Suwaidawi told AFP.

“A bomb went off under two US vehicles driving by the Saddam Great Mosque in the center of Ramadi at around 7:00 am (0300 GMT), destroying one vehicle, damaging the other and injuring a number of soldiers,” said Suwaidawi, a town resident.

US troops called in reinforcements and two helicopters were seen hovering over the scene of the attack as the wounded were evacuated, he said.

Four US soldiers were wounded Thursday — four in an attack in Fallujah, another hotspot town west of Baghdad, and the others on a road north of the capital — a military spokesman said.

A military convoy also came under fire on the road between Kirkuk and Balad, north of Baghdad, leaving four people wounded, the spokesman said.

The attack late Wednesday followed the earlier killings of two US soldiers around Baghdad, a regular battlefield in the war of attrition between the coalition and guerrilla fighters, believed to include Saddam loyalists, Islamic fundamentalists and gangsters.

The unrest in southern Iraq and the death of the British soldier came as US marines were preparing to hand over five provinces in south-central Iraq to a 9,000-strong Polish-led multinational force. The handover is to be completed by September 3.

The US army’s 4th Infantry Division, meanwhile, detained 17 more people north of Baghdad as it scoured the countryside for criminals and Saddam Hussein’s henchmen on the third day of its Operation Ivy Needle, a military spokesman said.

The US ground commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, also said that the coalition did not need more troops in Iraq but more human intelligence on anti-coalition activities.

“It’s an issue of being able to work with the Iraqi people, and getting the Iraqi people to help us,” Sanchez told reporters.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday the United States would send more troops to Iraq “in a minute” if the top US commander in the region asked for them. —AFP