BAGHDAD, 31 May 2003 — The US Army has detained a senior Baath Party leader in Saddam Hussein’s native stronghold of Tikrit in connection with the spate of guerrilla attacks on US troops in central Iraq, Central Command said yesterday. “A Fourth Infantry Division task force captured a senior Baath Party official from Tikrit and are questioning him regarding recent attacks,” it said in a statement without elaborating.

One US soldier was killed in an ambush on a major supply route north of the capital Thursday, two were killed in a raid in the western town of Fallujah on Tuesday, and another was killed in a bomb attack in Baghdad on Monday. The commander of coalition ground forces, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, on Thursday blamed “regime holdouts” for the attacks which he said had turned western Iraq into a “combat zone”.

The attacks have prompted US commanders in Iraq to consider not sending troops home until reinforcements arrive, a top Marine general said yesterday.

Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, said, however, that the estimated 40,000 Marines in Iraq and Kuwait will have to come back soon to keep up with other scheduled deployments.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition in Iraq turned up the pressure on neighboring Iran yesterday with a warning against Islamist hard-liners it said were pouring in to destabilize the country. The announcement came on the heels of charges by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Tehran was shipping troops across the border into Iraq.

A Shiite imam called yesterday for the “immediate” withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq, saying the Iraqis should be allowed to determine their own future.

“We ask US forces in particular, and coalition forces in general, to leave Iraq immediately, because it is for the Iraqi people to determine their future,” Sheikh Kazem Al-Abadi said at Friday prayers in a mosque of suburban Sadr City.