BAGHDAD, 29 November 2003 — Hundreds of Iraqis marched through the center of Baghdad to protest against the violence plaguing the country’s reconstruction as a US soldier was killed yesterday in a mortar attack on a base in northern Iraq.
After US President George W. Bush told his troops during a lightning Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad that the coalition would prevail over the resistance, former US first lady Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton spent the day in the city.
On her own visit to Baghdad, Clinton criticized the US Republican administration for failing to internationalize the Iraq question.
Iraqi police and US forces closed off Baghdad’s main commercial thoroughfare as hundreds marched through the city center to demonstrate against terror amid persistent fears of attack by anti-US resistance fighters or militants.
Security services were taking no chances with a rally bound to be seen as pro-American by the resistance and a heavy Iraqi police presence accompanied the marchers while two US military helicopters hovered ahead.
“This is the picture of the martyr Adnan. He is a martyr of terror,” said Hassan Rehemi, holding aloft a photograph of his 20-year-old son, who died in a blast north of Baghdad last week.
In a speech, Aziz Al-Yasser, the coordinator of the rally organizers, the Alliance of Iraqi Democratic Forces, called on ordinary people to help the US-led coalition in the fight against the resistance.
“We have to help the coalition — the call issued by some for the withdrawal of occupation forces is suspect, Iraq will drown in a lake of blood if they withdraw,” he said, adding that the attacks were delaying the end of the US-led occupation.
The latest coalition casualty came when a US soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was killed when four mortar shells were fired at the division’s base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a US Army spokesman said.
Bush’s visit was welcomed yesterday by the country’s Shiite majority but shunned by the Sunnis as a cowardly swift stopover for fear of insurgents. US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice confirmed yesterday that talks were under way on handing over power to the Iraqis.
“I know that (Paul) Bremer and his people are in discussions with a whole variety of people, including those that represent the Shias and represent the ayatollah and his people about how this goes forward,” she said.
Meanwhile, the unrest continued yesterday when two young Iraqi sisters were killed by US troops north of Baghdad as they collected wood from a field near Baqubah, police and family members said.
— Additional input from agencies
