The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Washington

The US troop presence in Iraq will remain bigger than it was before last year's "surge" in forces, even after the pull-out of some 20,000 troops by July, a top Pentagon official said Monday.

"In Iraq we are now projecting approximately 140,000 troops there in July," General Carter Ham, operations director of the Joint Staff, told reporters. He had earlier said that 8,000 support forces and trainers will need to stay on.

"It is, by the end of July, bigger than when we started the surge" in January 2007.

About 132,000 troops were in place when President George W. Bush ordered an increase in US forces in Iraq in a bid to quell violence and clear the way for political reconciliation among rival factions.

"There is a full expectation that further reductions will occur" in troop levels, Ham said, but it was "premature" to talk about "timing and pace" of this further drawdown.

Ham said earlier this month that support forces and trainers that went in with the surge will still be needed to back up Iraq's expanding security forces after the last of the extra combat brigades leaves.

About 8,000 support troops were deployed to Iraq as part of the surge.

General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, has called for a pause in US troop reductions after July to allow time to evaluate the performance of Iraq's security forces and the impact on security of a smaller US force.

At the peak of the post-surge period, the United States had some 170,000 troops in Iraq as it fought to quell a violent insurgency following the 2003 invasion which it led to depose former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Another report from Baghdad: At least 16 people were killed across Iraq on Monday, including soldiers and four pilgrims, a day after a suicide bomber killed 48 Shiite pilgrims in an attack which US officials blamed on Al-Qaeda.

In a brazen late afternoon attack, armed men ambushed a passing Iraqi army patrol in the town of Bohruz, in the restive Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, said army Brigadier General Ragib al-Omairi, the regional commander.

Seven soldiers and an army major were killed in the ambush, Omairi said.

Earlier Monday, a group of Shiite pilgrims heading to the central city of Karbala for the Arbaeen religious ceremony was hit by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Four of them, including three women, were killed, while 15 others were wounded, security officials said.

Tens of thousands of Shiite faithful are vulnerable to attack as they walk to Karbala from across Iraq to attend the Arbaeen ceremony, which marks the 40th day after Ashura, when the slaying of a revered seventh century imam is marked.