BAGHDAD, 19 July 2005 — Gunmen killed at least 29 police, soldiers and government workers in central and northern Iraq yesterday as an Iraqi general reported a new operation against insurgents in Baghdad. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that more violence lies ahead.

The latest bloodshed occurred in a series of small scale ambushes and shootings as Baghdad received a respite yesterday in the wave of suicide bombings that killed 22 people in the embattled capital the day before.

However, a car bomb targeted US and Iraqi troops yesterday in Rawah, 275 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, witnesses reported. At least one person, believed to have been a civilian, was killed, the witnesses said.

The deadliest attack occurred yesterday in the western Baghdad district of Khadra, where eight policemen died in a gunbattle with insurgents, police said. It was unclear if the insurgents suffered casualties.

Gunmen also killed at least five other police officers, including a colonel, in scattered attacks around the capital, police and hospital officials said.

Three civilian government employees were also killed in separate ambushes in Baghdad, police reported.

Outside the capital, a policeman died in a shootout between insurgents and security forces just north of Baghdad in Taji, police said.

In Samarra, 95 kilometers north of Baghdad, gunmen killed a police colonel, an Interior Ministry official and three Iraqi soldiers in a series of attacks.

In the north, gunmen killed two Iraqi soldiers in eastern Mosul and assassinated Abdul-Ghani Al-Naimi, whose brother is a member of the Iraqi Parliament.

Also yesterday, the military said a US Marine died in a non-hostile incident the prior day at a US base in Ramadi. The death is under investigation.

The latest violence occurred as Iraqi forces reported a new offensive against the insurgents in the capital. An Iraqi general, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Operation Thunder began last week on the west side of the Tigris River, which divides the city.

He said about 50 suspected insurgents, including two Syrians, had been captured in the opening days of the operation, which will be expanded in stages over the next few days.

In a visit to Berlin, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said a recent spike in suicide bombings in Iraq wouldn’t derail the drafting of a new constitution or progress toward democracy. But he warned of more violence ahead.

“Every major milestone has been met. That will continue, in my belief, to happen,” Myers said.

However, he added: “Clearly, there’s going to be more violence ahead because there are people who don’t want that to happen.”

Al-Qaeda in Iraq reported yesterday that one of its “field commanders” had been killed by coalition forces in western Iraq, the terror group purportedly said in a statement posted on a website used by militants. The statement did not say when the man, Abi Salih Al-Ansar, was killed.

Security has deteriorated steadily since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari announced his new Shiite-dominated government April 28. Most of the insurgents are Sunnis, who enjoyed considerable prestige in Iraq during the rule of ousted President Saddam Hussein.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Iraqis to end the violence and join in building “a united, democratic and prosperous Iraq.”

The deteriorating security situation has also alarmed Iraq’s most powerful Shiite clergyman, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, whose tacit endorsement was crucial in the Shiite victory in the Jan. 30 elections.

Following a weekend meeting with Al-Sistani in Najaf, Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a top Shiite politician, said the cleric had urged the government to protect the people in “this genocidal war.”

However, another leading Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr, blamed the continuing violence in Iraq on the presence of US and other foreign forces.

“The occupation in itself is a problem,” Sadr told the BBC in a broadcast yesterday. “Iraq not being independent is the problem. And the other problems stem from that — from sectarianism to civil war, the entire American presence causes this.”

Sadr led uprisings against US forces last year but negotiated a cease-fire under pressure from Al-Sistani and the Shiite clerical hierarchy.