BAGHDAD, 31 December 2004 — Plans were unveiled to deploy more than 100,000 Iraqi forces to stave off a bloodbath on election day exactly a month from now as more than a dozen Iraqis were killed in attacks across the country yesterday.

The deadly violence came after battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in the northern city of Mosul left at least 26 dead, including a US soldier, and 30 people were killed when a booby-trapped house in Baghdad exploded.

The grim business of hostage-taking again surfaced, with two Lebanese businessmen kidnapped in an upmarket neighbourhood of Baghdad late Wednesday.

And the Iraqi government announced that a senior aide to Iraq’s most wanted man, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi — whose militants are behind many deadly attacks and killings of hostages — was captured recently in Baghdad. A similar arrest was made in Mosul on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, insurgents detonated car bombs against a US patrol and attacked a combat outpost in Mosul triggering airstrikes and clashes that left at least 25 rebels dead, the US military said. A US soldier died of wounds suffered in one of the car bombings, the military announced yesterday.

Despite the volatile security situation, US President George W. Bush insisted elections must go ahead as planned on Jan. 30, even as a militant group reiterated to sabotage the poll with deadly violence.

An Al-Qaeda linked group, Ansar Al-Sunnah, which claimed responsibility for last week’s deadly attack against US troops in Mosul, renewed a threat to attack polling stations during the election, in a statement on its website.

“It’s very important that these elections proceed,” Bush said Wednesday.

US and Iraqi officials have said they hope an increase in offensives against insurgents, coupled with airtight security on Jan. 30, will allow voting to go ahead across the nation.

Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, the US-led military’s deputy director of operations, bluntly listed the potential election day hazards.

“They (insurgents) will make attempts to try to disrupt the process by attacking election officials as well as those Iraqi citizens who have volunteered to be candidates and campaign in the political process. There will be attempted attacks against polling places and polling locations.”

Adel Lami, a ranking officer on Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission, said “about 100,000 police and National Guard will be mobilized.”

Lessel said US forces will ramp up their operations ahead of Jan. 30 to disrupt the insurgency, with its turbulent mix of Saddam Hussein loyalists, criminals, fundamentalists and renegade tribal factions.

“In the areas where there are security concerns — Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul — we are taking active, positive steps to go on the offensive against the insurgents to help create the security environment necessary to have ... elections in those cities.”

— With input from agencies