Troops seek order in Baghdad

Baghdad, Iraq ? American troops stepped up their presence here to deal with street crime and looting, even as the new U.S. civil administrator insisted Thursday that conditions had not deteriorated as badly as critics contend.

“This is not a country in anarchy,” L. Paul Bremer III said at his first news conference since arriving in Iraq. “People are going about their business, they are going about their lives.”

At the same time, Bremer conceded there was a “serious law-and-order problem.” He and a senior military commander said U.S. forces had taken a higher profile in response.

“We’re aggressively out on the streets now and trying to show the people of Iraq that they do have a secure city to live in,” said Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq.

“We are a police force now. Our combat engineers have become civil engineers, our infantrymen and tankers are security guards and police, and civil affairs have become paymasters,” Blount said.

The violence and chaos in the capital city have fueled growing resentment against the U.S. presence. Looting and burning of large buildings has become a near-daily occurrence, and small-arms fire crackles nightly.

The Associated Press¢ Heavily armed U.S. forces stormed into a village near the northern city of Tikrit before dawn, seizing more than 260 people, including one unidentified man on the United States’ most-wanted list. All but about 30 were later released.¢ Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division shot and wounded a looter in Mosul after being fired upon, U.S. military officials said. The shooting, which came a day after officials denied issuing a shoot-on-sight policy against looters, was in accordance with the rules of engagement because the soldiers had come under fire, the Army said.¢ A V Corps soldier was grazed by a gunshot late Wednesday after responding to gunfire at a Mosul bus station, the military said.¢ On the Tigris River north of Tikrit, U.S. forces saw a boat being loaded with cases of unidentified materials and fired a warning flare. The Americans came under fire from the boat and fired back; they said they thought they killed everyone aboard.¢ In an apparent bid to get Russian and French support on the U.N. Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would consider suspending sanctions against Iraq rather than lifting them.