About 30 to 40 fighters were seen at the lakeside training camp attacked by US and Iraqi forces the day before, claiming they had never left, an AFP correspondent who visited the site said.

In the capital, Shiite political leaders said the parliament could convene Saturday to vote on Iraq's first elected post-Saddam Hussein government.

The correspondent, who traveled with other journalists to the camp in the village of Ain al-Hilwa on Lake Tharthar, 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Baghdad, said he saw the remains of three burnt-out vehicles on a dusty road leading to the site.

A few mud huts were damaged and big craters gouged the ground.

One of the fighters, who called himself Mohammed Amer and claimed to belong to the Secret Islamic Army, said they had never left the base.

He also said only 11 of his comrades were killed in airstrikes on the site.

Iraqi commanders have said 85 suspected insurgents were killed in an assault by Iraqi troops and US aircraft on the camp Tuesday, adding that no one was captured and others had fled by boat.

Asked about the presence of rebels at the camp late Wednesday, a member of the Iraqi police commandos that took part in the operation said Iraqi and US troops withdrew from the area at about 6:30 pm (1530 GMT) Tuesday.

Local hospitals told AFP they had received no casualties from the battle.

"The commandos killed 35 and US air raids killed 50. But no one was captured and many escaped by boat," General Adnan Thabet, a senior advisor to the interior ministry, earlier told AFP by phone from Samarra.

"During the fight, 30 boats left."

A statement from the outgoing government, which confirmed the insurgent toll, said one Algerian was captured.

"The terrorists had planned on attacking Samarra by using a large number of VBIEDs (car bombs) that were found at the facility," it said.

The "terror camp", frequented by members of Saddam's Baath party and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's branch of Al-Qaeda, was built after the US offensive to retake the rebel enclave of Fallujah in November, Thabet said.

"They were Zarqawi followers and Baathists from the old military because they knew how to fight. They fought like old soldiers."

Besides Fallujah, where rebels had turned the entire town into one giant command center before November, the only other known strike on a suspected rebel camp was by US forces near Qaim on the Syrian border in June 2003.

"This was a serious military camp with a living section and guard posts," said a commando officer, named Jalil, who took part in the operation.

He said fighters had been using fishing boats to cross the vast man-made Tharthar Lake from tense Al-Anbar province to the west to the tiny village of Ain al-Hilwa on the border with Salaheddin province, another restive area.

Jalil said machine guns, rockets, arms and training manuals including ones on how to make roadside bombs were found at the camp along with fake identification cards, passports and documents that proved the presence of foreigners, long blamed for the bulk of the insurgency.

He estimated that some 100 fighters might have been at the camp at the time of the attack.

Thabet said six commandos were killed and four wounded.

A US military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Goldenberger, confirmed the operation and said Apache attack and Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopters backed the commandos.

He said what started as an Iraqi mission quickly turned into a joint one after fighters opened fire on the some 240 members of the interior ministry's 1st Commando Battalion approaching the camp.

"More important than the number of insurgent casualties is the fact that we have disabled their capabilities and denied them a safe haven," he said.

Further north and in another hotbed of the Sunni-led insurgency, a suicide car bomb in Mosul hit a US military convoy, wounding two US and two Iraqi soldiers, the military said.

An 11-year-old girl was killed when a mortar round struck a school in Amariyah, west of the capital, said medical sources. Another girl was wounded.

And five bodies, all shot in the head except for the corpse of a female university student who also had her mouth cut open with a knife, were found on farmland near Suwaira, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital, said police Lieutenant Colonel Khalil Obeid.

On the political front, Iraq's election-winning Shiite list said it was pushing for Iraq's parliament to meet Saturday.

"We may convene (parliament) on Saturday," said politician Ali al-Dabbagh, after a closed-door three-hour session of the United Iraqi Alliance.

Dabbagh said the UIA was awaiting a response from the Kurdistan Alliance, its main partner in a potential coalition government, and the runner up in the elections.

He said he expected the sides to meet Thursday and take a decision on when the parliament will hold its second session and nominate its speaker and the country's president. The long-deprived Shiite community is expected to take 16 to 17 ministries.

Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse

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