BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – An audiotape attributed to Iraq’s most feared terrorist lashed out Wednesday at Sunni Muslim clerics for not speaking out against U.S. attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. and Iraqi officials said they would press their offensive against insurgents following the fall of Fallujah.

In the tape posted Wednesday on an Islamic Web site, Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi condemned the “silence” of Muslim religious figures, saying they have “let us down in the darkest circumstances.”

The authenticity of the 16-minute tape could not be determined and it was unclear when it was made. However, the posting followed the insurgents’ defeat this month in Fallujah and appeared to be a sign of anger that Sunni religious leaders were unable to muster the same degree of public outrage that they did in April when U.S. Marines were besieging the city; the backlash led the Marines to break off the siege.

Two Sunni clerics from the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, which opposed the Fallujah assault, were assassinated this week.

With the capture of Fallujah, the U.S. general in charge of training Iraqi troops said U.S. and Iraqi forces would step up counterinsurgency operations in the run-up to the Jan. 30 national elections.

“Everyone recognizes that it will be a fight to the elections in those provinces where the insurgents are active,” Lt. Gen. David Petraeus told reporters after a graduation ceremony for Iraqi soldiers near Kut.

Petraeus said most of the country’s 18 provinces were calm but “in the four or six Sunni majority provinces where the insurgents are most active, there’s still a good deal of fighting to be done.”

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who attended the graduation, repeated his pledge that elections would take place on schedule.

But a group of mostly Sunni politicians plan to meet Friday to discuss whether they should urge the government to postpone the election for three or four months because of the security situation. Those planning to attend include representatives of the Iraqi Islamic party, the National Democratic Party, the Iraqi Communist Party, and the two major Kurdish parties.

Allawi said the next target for U.S. and Iraqi forces is a belt of small towns and villages south of Baghdad known as the “triangle of death.”

On Tuesday, some 5,000 U.S. troops, British soldiers and Iraqi forces launched “Operation Plymouth Rock,” the third major offensive against Iraqi insurgents this month. Unlike Fallujah, where U.S. troops fought intense house-to-house battles, the current operation involves sweeps through villages and farms to round up suspected guerrillas.

“The operations south of Baghdad, north of Hillah, is according to plans done by the government that gives priority to clearing these areas from the elements that want to inflict Iraq with death and destruction,” Allawi said.

Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said the Iraqi government intends to turns its attention to insurgents inside Baghdad once the current offensive south of the capital is completed.

“There are pockets in Baghdad that we have to liquidate and confront,” he said.

Five more bodies were discovered Wednesday in the northern city of Mosul, where insurgents have been targeting Iraqi police and soldiers for assassination, making a total of 20 in the past week, the military said.

The five men were found in the western part of the city, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, with Task Force Olympia, though there is no confirmation whether they were part of Iraqi security forces.

Before the latest grisly discovery, U.S. troops had found 10 bodies of soldiers- nine of those shot execution-style – who belonged to the Iraqi regular army, based at the al-Kisik military base about 30 miles west of Mosul, near Tal Afar, he said. Five other bodies, including four decapitated ones, have still not been identified, he said.

As part of the crackdown on insurgents, U.S. and Iraqi forces have been arresting Sunni and Shiite clerics who have spoken out against the Fallujah operation or who were suspected of links to the guerrillas.

On Wednesday, another Sunni cleric, Sheik Younis Mahdi, was arrested in Babil province, Al-Jazeera television reported.

On the audiotape, the speaker purported to be al-Zarqawi addressed the “ulama” – senior Muslim religious clerics.

“You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy. … You have quit supporting the mujahedeen,” the speaker said. “Hundreds of thousands of the nation’s sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence.”

He said the clerics “left the mujahadeen to face the strongest power in the world. Are your hearts not shaken by the scenes of your brothers being surrounded and hurt by your enemy?”

Al-Zarqawi’s group claimed responsibility for a car bomb that exploded on an overpass on Baghdad’s airport road. U.S. and hospital officials said two Iraqis were injured.

The U.S. offensive on Fallujah left at least 1,200 insurgents dead and more than 1,000 detained. More than 54 U.S. troops were killed and about 425 wounded.

Shaalan, the defense minister, also said about 60 Arab foreign fighters have been arrested in the Fallujah operation

Meanwhile, a delegation from the international Red Cross visited former leader Saddam Hussein Wednesday to check on his condition in detention, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Muin Kassis with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Amman, Jordan, said the visit “took place recently in the detention place of the former president of Iraq.”

He said he didn’t know whether Saddam sent his family any messages this time, but that ICRC remains in contact with his family. The visit was the latest since October by the ICRC team which has regularly monitored him since his capture last December.

Saddam underwent surgery to repair a hernia at the end of September or in early October and made a full recovery. He is believed to be held in an American-guarded facility near Baghdad International Airport.