Bush warns of more violence before Iraq's coming elections

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.

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.

Source: Xinhua