Eight civilians dead after troops clash with insurgents

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- On the eve of the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, American troops clashed with gunmen north and west of Baghdad Sunday as insurgents lobbed a mortar round into the holy city of Karbala where a million Shiite pilgrims assembled for a major religious commemoration.\nIraqis in the capital expressed unease with the increasing violence, which they said they hoped would have ended by now.\n"It is a painful anniversary. We were expecting that Iraq would get better," Munthir Rasheed said. "But it is completely in reverse. Iraq has passed through three years which are the worst in its history."\nPolice said eight civilians, including a child, were killed in clashes between U.S. troops and gunmen in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The town is in the Sunni Arab heartland where the Iraqi army and U.S. soldiers opened an airborne campaign last week to hunt for insurgents.\nDuring operations in Duluiyah, U.S. troops arrested Col. Farouq Khalil, an Iraqi interior ministry official, after raiding his house, police said.\nThe U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier the military reported that dozens of suspected insurgents had been detained. The Iraqi government said that 17 suspects were released after questioning and that the "search for terrorists and weapons" continued in that region.\nMembers of the Iraqi Red Crescent said U.S. troops, citing security concerns, prevented them from delivering relief aid to beleaguered communities in the area.\nElsewhere, two civilians were killed and 10 wounded when gunmen attacked U.S. troops stationed at the governor's office in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. Firefighters were seen pulling furniture from a burning house set ablaze in the crossfire.\n Assailants in southwest Baghdad also gunned down a man as he was leaving a Shiite mosque, police said.\nThose deaths came a day after a dozen other suspected victims in the shadowy Shiite-Sunni reprisal spree were found in the capital.\nIraq's former interim prime minister said the increasing attacks across his country can only be described as a civil war, and warned that the United States and Europe could be touched by spreading violence, according to an interview aired Sunday.\n"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," Ayad Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."\nThe mortar round fired at the holy city of Karbala landed in a parking lot a half mile from a shrine that was the destination of Shiite Muslims mourning Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, in an annual pilgrimage. No one was hurt.\nPilgrims began self-flagellation rites with chains Sunday in displays of grief over Hussein's death. Monday was to be the 40th and final day of mourning.\nThe governor of Karbala said more than 3 million pilgrims had arrived in the city.\nIn violence aimed at police, gunmen killed four guards at archaeological sites in the northern city of Mosul. A fifth policeman and a bystander were wounded. A roadside bomb exploded on a police patrol in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing one officer and injuring 10 others, the Iraqi military said.\nA Baghdad policeman driving on a rural road in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of the Iraqi capital, was killed by gunmen, police said. Four men riding in the car were wounded in the attack.\nNear the southern city of Basra, two officials of the Iraqi Islamic Party were gunned down by four assassins. In the northern region of Kirkuk, two Iraqi soldiers were found stabbed to death two days after they were reported kidnapped, U.S. authorities said.