Even before the electric images of a US army medic examining a dishevelled Saddam were beamed around the world, US commanders here had been at pains to stress that the fugitive dictator's demise would be no "end-all solution" to the persistent attacks dogging their troops.

And as the days counted down to year-end, a new upsurge in violence washed over US forces across the Sunni Muslim belt that extends north and west from the capital, dashing any lingering hopes of a swift crushing of the armed resistance from among Iraq's restive former elite.

The deaths of at least 25 Iraqis in a wave of unrest in the two days after the momentous announcement of Saddam's catpure showed that support for the ouster of his regime among the Kurds and the Shiite majority is not shared by large numbers of the deposed dictator's fellow Sunni Muslims.

"We do not expect at this time that we will have a complete elimination of these attacks," warned coalition ground forces chief Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez shortly after Saddam's caputure.

"I believe these will continue for some time."

Even leading hawks in the US-led administration resisted the temptation to bask in a stunning intelligence coup after months of mounting casualty tolls that had severely dented support for their interventionist policies.

"We do expect that violence will continue," said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a key champion of the US-led six-week spring invasion.

"We do not expect this to close the book on this struggle for Iraq's freedom," she told US network NBC.

The US coalition has lost some 200 soldiers in action since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1, as well as more than 2,200 wounded, an average of around 10 a day.

Saddam's headline-grabbing capture could not hide the fact that after eight months of occupation, the promised post-war reconstruction effort remains hamstrung in large swathes of Iraq by a deadly hostility to coalition personnel that belies the pre-war rhetoric of a lightning campaign of liberation.

The US military says it is facing "low-intensity" warfare from diehard supporters of the old regime in league with foreign extremists.

But the overwhelming firepower it has deployed in counter-insurgency operations across the Sunni belt in recent months has increasingly undercut its efforts to play down the scale of resistance.

Commanders have called in warplanes and helicopter gunships to pound suspected insurgent hideouts and arms caches with laser-guided bombs and heavy-calibre cannon fire, even in the heart of the Iraqi capital.

Persistent attacks on US bases across western and north-central Iraq have forced US commanders to throw up elaborate fortifications around all coalition facilities.

The concrete watchtowers and razor wire entry control points have come into their own in the face of a spate of suicide bombings targeting US bases in recent weeks.

"It was worth every penny, every second it took to do it," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Pease said of the defences around his headquarters in the northern town of Tall Afar after they miraculously prevented coalition loss of life in a suicide bombing on December 9.

However the "force protection measures" have exacted a severe cost in terms of diminishing contact between coalition personnel and ordinary Iraqis.

Those Iraqis without the special identity cards granted the select few who work with the coalition are forced to run the gauntlet of multiple checkpoints guarded by jumpy US troops, who tend to regard all Iraqis as hostile until proven otherwise.

Even senior coalition officials implicitly acknowledge that their personnel are only able to move around large parts of Iraq under the tightest of protection.

Two Japanese diplomats and seven Spanish intelligence agents who lost their lives to the insurgents in late November contributed to their own deaths by dropping the usual security precautions, said the number two in the US-led occupation authority, Britain's Jeremy Greenstock.

As the countdown to the coalition's end-June deadline for returning sovereignty to Iraq gathers pace, US officials have repeatedly stressed the growing role of Iraqis in maintaining their own security.

On a visit to Iraq in November, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was repeatedly filmed with Iraqi civil defence corps personnel and other officials.

But across the Sunni belt, public hostility often forces the Iraqi police to distance themselves from counter-insurgency operations, leaving US commanders regarding them as little better than neutral.

And this week the coalition suffered the embarrassment of a mass walkout from the very first battalion of the planned new Iraqi army, apparently over pay.

The upshot has been that the US military has been forced to turn to former militiamen of opposition groups from among the Kurds and the majority Shiite community in its bid to find reliably anti-Saddam personnel to fight the insurgents.

But the initiative has only fanned increasingly dire predictions among the disempowered Sunni minority of looming communal violence.

And as the calendar pages tore off to the end of year, a flurry of attacks targetted Shiite mosques and other targets .

It is something that US foes will undoubtedly seek to fan as they seek to derail the coalition's plans for a new Iraq.

The coalition ground forces commander said as much just ahead of Saddam's capture.

"We expect to see an increase in violence as we move towards the transfer of sovereignty at the end of June," said Sanchez.

"By the time we pass sovereignty back to the Iraqi people those (enemy) forces will have to conduct some sort of operation against the political and economic sector while keeping pressure on the military to derail that process."

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