Rumsfeld signals soldiers' pullback

Guerillas stormed an Iraqi army post yesterday, killing 10 soldiers and wounding 20, as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told US combat soldiers their numbers would fall as Iraqi forces were trained to take over.

While Mr Rumsfeld made a pre-Christmas visit to a Marine base in the former rebel stronghold of Falluja, west of Baghdad, gunmen launched a dawn assault on the roadside outpost near Adhaim, north of the capital, that lasted all morning.

Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.

It started, the internet claim said, with a suicide car bomb at a checkpoint. By the end, police said, 10 soldiers were dead and 20 wounded in the bloodiest attack since last week's election. There was no account of casualties among the gunmen. A civilian motorist was killed and another wounded in crossfire.

In the same region, a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed up to 10 people at a packed Shi'ite mosque. The assaults ended about 10 days of relative calm across Iraq.

The lull had coincided with draconian election security measures and with an informal truce by some Sunni Arab insurgent groups, though not al Qaeda, which abhors the political process.

Tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs marched in Baghdad after Friday Muslim prayers in protest at provisional poll results confirming the dominance of Shi'ite Islamists.

A UN official said he saw no need for the re-run Sunnis want, however, and Sunni leaders privately acknowledged the protests are partly aimed at gaining leverage in talks already under way on their role in a grand coalition government.

In the attack on a Shi'ite mosque in Balad Ruz northeast of Baghdad, as many as 10 Iraqis, including a policeman, were killed when a bomber strapped with explosives rode his bicycle into the courtyard, the US military said. It said four others were wounded. Two US soldiers were also killed when a roadside bomb blasted their vehicle in the capital.

Six Sudanese, including a diplomat, were kidnapped after Friday prayers in Baghdad, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said.

Mr Rumsfeld announced a slight realignment in US forces, citing progress in the training of local security forces.

US combat forces in Iraq would be reduced by two brigades, involving about 7,000 soldiers by early in the new year, while soldiers involved in training Iraq's military would be increased.