BAGHDAD, Iraq — Faced with armed resistance that has killed four American soldiers this week, allied military commanders now plan to keep a larger force in Iraq than they had anticipated and to send war-hardened units to trouble spots outside Baghdad, senior American officials said on Wednesday.
Instead of sending home the 3rd Infantry Division, which led the charge on Baghdad, American officials are developing plans that call for most of its troops to extend their stay to quell unrest and extend American control.
Allied officials said that about 160,000 American and British troops were in Iraq and that most were likely to stay until security improves and other nations eased the burden by contributing troops.
Tens of thousands of logistics and transportation troops in Kuwait also are part of the Iraq deployment. As a result, the total number of allied forces directly and indirectly involved in securing Iraq is 200,000 or more, American military officials estimated.
A month ago, allied military officials were hoping to reduce American forces here at a faster rate, drawing the American presence in Iraq down to less than two divisions by the fall.
A new assessment of allied troop requirements is being prepared by the Army's V Corps, which assumes command next month of allied forces in Iraq. The review is not expected to be finalized for several days, but one American officer said, "The planning is looking at moving elements of the 3rd Division to hot spots outside of Baghdad."
One likely scenario is that a substantial portion of the division will be deployed to Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, military officials said. Fifteen Iraqis were killed and dozens were wounded in clashes with American soldiers last month, and two more Iraqis died after attacking American soldiers last week. On Tuesday, two American soldiers were killed there.
Other units from the division — an infantry battalion or perhaps the 3-7 Cavalry Squadron — may be sent north of Baghdad to reinforce the 4th Infantry Division, which is charged with policing a huge swath of territory from Tikrit to Kirkuk to the Iranian border.
The 3rd Infantry Division led the allied attack to Baghdad, and has been charged with providing security in Baghdad. Many of its soldiers had expected to leave after the 1st Armored Division assumed responsibility for security in the Iraqi capital this week.
Some of the 3rd Infantry Division units have been in the Persian Gulf region for nine months. The idea of extending the deployment has come as a shock to many of the division's soldiers, who say they have done more than their share by leading the charge to Baghdad. But senior officials in the division hope that a new mission will raise morale.
In other developments:
The Bush administration on Wednesday made public its assessment of two mysterious trailers found in Iraq, calling them mobile units to produce deadly germs and the strongest evidence yet that Saddam Hussein had been hiding a program to prepare for biological warfare.
"We're highly confident" of that judgment, a U.S. intelligence official told reporters. The official said the administration's strong conviction was based mainly on the similarity between the testimony of Iraqi sources and the evidence found on the ground.
In London, opponents of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq renewed their criticism of the war Wednesday after the American defense secretary said Iraq may have destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before the war.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking in New York on Tuesday, said it was possible the reason Iraqi chemical or biological weapons had not yet been found, was that Saddam Hussein's government "decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict."
Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary who quit as leader of the House of Commons in protest against the war, said Rumsfeld's comments vindicated his own stance.
"If Donald Rumsfeld is now admitting the weapons are not there, the truth is the weapons probably haven't been there for quite a long time," Cook told British Broadcasting Corp. Radio.
"It matters immensely," he said, "because the basis on which the war was sold to the British House of Commons, to the British people, was that Saddam represented a serious threat."
Contributing: William J. Broad, Associated Press.