A strategic pattern to Iraqi strikes

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan began under a pall of fear Monday, as a coordinated series of attacks killed about 40 people here - the most violent day in Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Investigations are just beginning, but the incidents fit a pattern of increasingly organized attacks that hit soft targets to demoralize foreigners and locals working with the coalition. Iraqi police have been singled out - dozens of lightly guarded stations in Baghdad are easy targets.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was probably one of the softest targets with foreigners in Baghdad; it has a policy of using minimal security.

But if more aid workers leave the country or if Iraqi police either quit or refuse to volunteer for dangerous duty, humanitarian and law enforcement duties will revert to coalition troops - soldiers generally ill-equipped for either task.

Monday's attacks represent a hard strike at vulnerable targets. Between about 8:15 and 9:30 Monday morning, residents felt the shudder of four explosions. The first hit the Red Cross building in the wealthy neighborhood of Karada. Three other successful attacks damaged police stations manned by Iraqi police and US soldiers. A fifth suicide attack was averted when Iraqi police shot and killed the driver of an explosive-filled car. At least 27 were killed in the police station bombings, including one US soldier, and 12 were killed at the Red Cross. Many of the dead were bystanders.

Monday's evidence suggests that the situation is getting worse amid signs that the US coalition is fighting a two-front war here. One is against die-hard Hussein loyalists who stage hit-and-run attacks; and another takes on radical Islamists who may have ties to Al Qaeda and are probably coordinating the suicide attacks.

"There are indications that certainly these attacks seem to have been the operations of foreign fighters. They are not something that we have seen in the former regime loyalists," Brig. Gen Mark Hertling told a press conference on Monday.

The latest round of incidents could reverberate far beyond the immediate heartbreak and anger. The Aug. 19 truck bombing that killed 23 at the UN's Baghdad headquarters prompted an exodus of aid workers from the UN and other agencies. Some analysts fear the attack on the Red Cross could do the same.

"It's too soon to say. I hope we will stay of course," said an emotional Nada Doumani, the Red Cross spokeswoman in Baghdad while standing near the damaged building. "But if a decision is taken to reduce our presence here, the backlash will fall on the Iraqi people."

Ms. Doumani said it has always been a Red Cross principle not to have armed guards and to have only light security around their buildings. "We didn't want to have a high wall and be separated from the people we've come to help," she said. "But that may have to change."

Separating aid workers and coalition officials from Iraqis is exactly what such attacks do. Large numbers of coalition officials already spend their entire day inside the "green zone" - a walled complex of dozens of buildings at the heart of the city that is closed to noncoalition traffic.

It was a second bad day for the coalition. On Sunday, at least six missiles hit the Al Rasheed Hotel where most of the senior coalition staff live. The attack was months in the planning and used a missile-launching bay designed to look like a portable generator.

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