The US-led forces have mounted a major offensive on a cluster of small towns known as the "triangle of death" south of Baghdad as the fighting against rebel pockets continues in Fallujah.

Since Tuesday, some 5,000 US Marines, British troops and Iraqi commandos have swept through a string of towns, 50 km south of Baghdad, in a hunt for rebels and insurgents.

Thirty-two suspected insurgents have been arrested so far, according to the US military.

The new battles take place in the so-called "the triangle of death" region, where armed rebels have controlled the main roads connecting Baghdad with Iraq's central and southern parts. The US-led forces are trying to cut the roads between these small towns and the flash point city of Fallujah, which are believed to be used to transport supplies and ammunition.

In addition, the triangle of death has a strategic importance, for it lies on the way from the Iraqi capital to the southern cities including holy Shiite places like Najaf and Karbala. This area has witnessed a wide scale of killings and kidnappings as armed rebels swarm around and establish checkpoints along the roads.

Some residents from the area said the armed rebels were killing people including Shiites on their way to the holy shrines in the south.

However, residents of Latifiyah, 25 km south of Baghdad, said in a statement published on Thursday that the armed groups were only targeting the policemen, national guards, and city council members. Great Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, Iraq's highest Shiite Muslim cleric, played down what was said about the killings and warned against taking revenge, which would trigger a sectarian war in the already war-torn country.

Meanwhile, the US-Iraqi forces continue fighting against what they say the small rebel pockets in Fallujah.

More than 2,000 people were killed so far in the flash point city and over 1,600 arrested, an Iraqi senior security official said on Thursday.

Fifty-four US soldiers were killed in action since the beginning of the US major offensive on Fallujah on Nov. 8.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government said on Thursday that a laboratory for manufacturing chemical weapons was found in Fallujah.

Instruction manuals on how to make explosives were also found in the lab and "they even talked about how to make anthrax," said a senior Iraqi official.

(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2004)