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WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- US President
George W. Bush said on Wednesday that he expected increasing violence in Iraq
before two scheduled votes in the Middle East country in October and December.
"We can expect there to be increasing violence from
the terrorists" in Iraq as two elections in the country were approaching, he
said in a statement on the war on terrorism.
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| US President George W. Bush makes a
statement on the "War on Terror" in the Rose Garden of the White House in
Washington Sept. 28. Bush is pictured alongside Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld (L) and Vice President Dick Cheney (C).
(Reuters) | A national
referendum on a new Iraqi constitution is slated for Oct. 15, and if the
constitution is approved by Iraqi voters, they would elect a new Iraqi
government on Dec. 15.
Bush said he had just been briefed on the war on
terror and the Iraq war by John Abizaid, chief of the US Central Command, and
George Casey, commander of US forces in Iraq, and they discussed the strategy
for victory in Iraq. The two generals would go to the Capitol Hill to brief
lawmakers on American military operations in Iraq, he said.
He said the US-led coalition and Iraqi troops were on
the hunt for terrorists in western Iraq. "We're on the offense. We have a plan
to win," Bush said.
The US strategy in Iraq was clear -- hunting down
"high-valued" targets like Abdullah Abu Azzam, the No. 2 figure in al-Qaeda's
Iraq organization who was killed over the weekend, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
said the president.
In Iraq, a suicide car bomb struck a police
checkpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Baquba on Wednesday, killing a civilian
and wounding 13 people including eight policemen, and a woman suicide bomber
blew herself up among a crowd of army recruits in Tal Afar in northern Iraq,
killing five recruits and wounding over 50 others.
Also on Wednesday, a US soldier was killed and
another wounded when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in southern Iraq,
bringing the death toll of American troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion
to about 1,920. Enditem | 
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