Also Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki delivered a blunt challenge to the United States, saying Tehran is willing to help U.S. troops withdraw from neighboring Iraq, but only if Washington makes some tough policy changes.
Mottaki contended that U.S. troops were responsible for at least half the violence tearing apart Iraq and that their departure would pay security dividends for the entire region.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A nephew of Saddam Hussein serving a life sentence for financing insurgents and possessing bombs escaped from prison Saturday in northern Iraq with the help of a police officer, authorities said.
The U.S. military announced that two Marines were killed in combat in Anbar province, raising to 42 the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq this month. At least 2,930 have died since the Iraq War started in March 2003.
Also Saturday, outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld traveled to Iraq "to express his appreciation to the troops and to thank both the troops and their families for the sacrifices they are making," said Air Force Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman.
Rumsfeld's trip follows an emotional farewell Friday at the Pentagon, where the defense secretary defended his record on Iraq and Afghanistan. His last full day will be Dec. 17; the Senate approved Robert M. Gates as his successor last week.
Sectarian attacks killed at least 20 people Saturday, including five who died in a suicide car bombing outside a Shiite shrine in Karbala, police said. Officers also found 39 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad that apparently were victims of revenge killings by Sunni Arabs and Shiites.
The suicide bomb attack occurred near the Al-Abbas shrine in Karbala, a Shiite holy city 50 miles south of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, some of the worst violence was in a Sunni pocket of Hurriyah, a mixed neighborhood. Witnesses said Shiite militiamen entered the area after Sunnis warned the few Shiites living there to leave or be killed.
Meanwhile, the escape by Saddam's nephew underlined one of the problems facing the U.S. military as it tries to train enough Iraqi security personnel so U.S. troops can go home: the ability of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite militiamen to infiltrate Iraqi police forces.
Ayman Sabawi, son of Saddam's half brother Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, escaped from a prison 45 miles west of the northern city of Mosul in the afternoon with the help of a policeman, said a local police commander, Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri.
Elsewhere, Iraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars and the country's largest Sunni Arab political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, on Saturday condemned a deadly U.S. military attack the previous day in al-Ishaqi village in volatile Salahuddin province.
The U.S. command said a ground raid and airstrike killed 20 insurgents, but local officials said that at least 19 civilians died, including seven women and eight children.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of hard-line Sunnis that opposes the coalition, issued a statement alleging that U.S. soldiers entered two Iraqi houses, shot 32 civilians to death, including women and children, and blew up the buildings to make it look as if the victims died in a U.S. airstrike targeting insurgents.
Also Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki delivered a blunt challenge to the United States, saying Tehran is willing to help U.S. troops withdraw from neighboring Iraq, but only if Washington makes some tough policy changes.
Mottaki contended that U.S. troops were responsible for at least half the violence tearing apart Iraq and that their departure would pay security dividends for the entire region.
"If the United States changes its attitude, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to help with the withdrawal from Iraq," Mottaki told the International Institute of Strategic Studies conference here. "Fifty percent of the problem of insecurity in Iraq is the presence of foreign troops."
