Gates hopes for Iraq drawdown to 100,000 troops by end of 2008

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Mourners pray near the coffins of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a Sunni Arab tribal leader and his two bodyguards, who were killed by a roadside bomb attack Thursday, during a funeral in Ramadi, 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad,

WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (AFP): US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Friday he hopes US troops can be drawn down to 10 combat brigades or about 100,000 troops by the end of 2008.
"My hope is that when he does his assessment in March that General (David) Petraeus will be able to say that the pace of the drawdown can continue at the same rate in the second half of the year as the first half of the year," Gates said.
Asked at a press conference if that meant a reduction to 10 combat brigades, or about 100,000 troops, by January 2009, Gates said: "That would be the math."
Meanwhile: The Iraq branch of Al-Qaeda said in an Internet statement on Friday that it killed Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha, a key US ally who was murdered in a bomb attack in Al-Anbar province on Thursday.
"Your brothers in the security ministry of the Islamic State in Iraq have assassinated the imam of the infidels and of apostasy, Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha," the statement said.
It called Abu Reesha "one of the dogs and standard bearers of the crusade of (US President George W.) Bush."
The operation had been planned a month ago, but the details could not be released for security reasons, the group said, according to a transcript provided by the US-based SITE monitoring service.
"We announce the formation of 'special security committees' to trace and assassinate prominent (leaders) of agent tribes who tarnished the reputation of their original tribes by helping the soldiers of the cross and the Safawi government of al-Maliki," the group adds.
It warned it would release a list of names of those people it was targeting in order to shame them.
"Let those who are left of the apostate and agent heads who are involved in the American project know that the swords of the Mujahideen are after them," it said, according to SITE.
Meanwhile: Four US soldiers were killed in Iraq's restive Diyala province on Friday by an explosion near their vehicle, the US military said in a statement.
The deaths come a day after US President George W. Bush announced he will pull some 21,500 combat troops from Iraq by mid-2008, citing the "measure of success" the US military is experiencing in the war-ravaged country.
The military gave no further details of Friday's incident in Diyala.
The latest fatalities took the military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,764, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Meanwhile: There has been a "significant" fall in the number of foreign fighters attacking US-led coalition forces in Iraq, the top US military commander in the country, General David Petraeus, said Friday.