U.S. troops from Kuwait to shore up Baghdad

SPECIAL REPORT

• Interactive: Who's who in Iraq

• Interactive: Sectarian divide

• Timeline: Bloodiest days for civilians

• Coalition Casualties

• Special Report

YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS

Iraq

Military

or Create Your Own

Manage Alerts | What Is This?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In an effort to tighten security in the Iraqi capital, U.S. troops will be redeployed from Kuwait to Baghdad, Iraq, "over the next few days," Pentagon officials said Friday.

President Bush referred to the move Thursday during his news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"Now, perhaps the place where there needs to be the most effective police force is in Baghdad," Bush said. "I just told you we're moving more troops in there."

The two battalions total about 1,500 troops and will have little impact on the overall U.S. troop levels in Iraq, which remain at about 133,000.

Seven hundred troops from a brigade on standby in Kuwait were moved to Baghdad to beef up security in March. They are still there.

The military had not planned to make the announcement until the troops arrived in Baghdad, but Bush's statement Thursday forced officials to confirm the deployment.

Market bombings

Eight people were killed and 33 others wounded Friday in central Baghdad when a bomb went off at a crowded outdoor furniture market, police said.

Another market attack wounded 18 civilians in Bayaa, a southwestern neighborhood in the Iraqi capital.

The violence struck as Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived Friday in Baghdad for meetings with government leaders, including his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari.

Mottaki's trip is only the second such high-level visit by an Iranian official since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.

Also Friday, a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi police officer and wounded four others in Kirkuk, about 155 miles (250 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Kirkuk is an ethnically mixed city of Kurds, Turkmen, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs.

A pair of roadside bombs also left five civilians wounded in the capital's Mansour district. And in northeast Baghdad's Shaab area, three bodies were found with signs of torture and gunshot wounds to the head, the latest instance of possible sectarian vendettas.

Violence also struck Iraq's national tennis team when gunmen killed its coach and two players in a drive-by shooting Thursday in Baghdad, said Amer Jabbar, chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee. Jabbar identified the coach as Hussein Ahmed Rashid.

The killings happened near Rashid's home in the southwestern neighborhood of Saydida.

Story Tools

Click Here to try 4 Free Trial Issues of Time!

Home Page Get up-to-the minute news from CNN CNN.com gives you the latest stories and video from the around the world, with in-depth coverage of U.S. news, politics, entertainment, health, crime, tech and more.

Home Page Get up-to-the minute news from CNN CNN.com gives you the latest stories and video from the around the world, with in-depth coverage of U.S. news, politics, entertainment, health, crime, tech and more.