Fresh American troops are to be brought into Baghdad, US officers said yesterday, even as Iraq's embattled government insisted it remained on course to gradually take full control of the country's security.
A six-week-old security clampdown in the capital has failed to quell a surge in sectarian violence, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki defended his record and said US soldiers would not stay in Iraq for decades or "even years."
Nevertheless, while Maliki began a trip to Britain and the US, the violence raged on at home.
One Iraqi soldier was killed and two wounded Monday in one of three Baghdad bombings in which one civilian was also killed, defense officials said.
The bodyguard of a Sunni politician was shot dead in west Baghdad, and the bodies of at least 27 murder victims were discovered, including eight found shot dead and dumped by the roadside in the southwest of the city.
Outside the capital, suicide bombings against security forces in the northern cities of Mosul and Samarra left five soldiers and one civilian dead and wounded 21 people, including six children.
On Sunday, two bomb attacks in the mainly Shiite east of the capital killed at least 42 people, and a car bomb outside a courthouse in the northern oil city of Kirkuk ripped through a crowded street killing 22 people.
The size of the redeployment has not been revealed, but units which were due to be sent elsewhere in the country are being diverted to the capital.
"They've been redirected to Baghdad," US Major Scott Coulson said. "Where they were going before, they're not going now."
Trial
Meanwhile, deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein boycotted the latest hearing in his trial for crimes against humanity yesterday, amid reports that a 17-day-old hunger strike has weakened him.
No defense lawyers and only one of Saddam's co-defendants came to the hearing at the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad, triggering the ire of judge Rauf Abdel Rahman, who accused them of political grandstanding.
"The decision of the lawyers to boycott the hearing is designed to generate publicity and thwart the course of justice," he declared.
Saddam and seven former allies are accused of having overseen the execution of 148 Shiite civilians from the village of Dujail in revenge for an alleged 1983 bid to assassinate the then Iraqi leader.
The defendants and their legal team claim that the court is a front for US forces in Iraq and have refused to accept its authority. On July 7, Saddam and three defendants began a hunger strike in protest at their treatment.
Saddam's half-brother and former secret police chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti did come to court, but then refused to accept a court-appointed lawyer and demanded to be excused and allowed to return to his cell.
The judge refused, and insisted that the defendant remain in place while the stand-in counsel pursued the case for his defense.
"Your lawyers are boycotting the procedure for political reasons," the Kurdish judge Abdel Rahman said, insisting that his court is impartial.
Saddam's defense team, three of whom have been murdered since the trial, are based in the Jordanian capital Amman, from where on Sunday they announced their intention to boycott the hearings.
"I'm here against my will," declared Barzan al-Tikriti, but after being admonished by the judge he agreed to sit quietly in his pristine white robe and traditional red head-dress to hear the court-appointed lawyer's defense.
"This tribunal is not legitimate, because the United States invaded Iraq without a resolution from the UN Security Council. My presence here is contrary to the Geneva Conventions," he said.
Over the weekend, prosecutors said that 68-year-old Saddam's hunger strike was harming his health and had led to him being given hospital treatment, but on Monday a spokesman for Saddam's US jailers said his life was not in danger.
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