|
Angry crowd mutilates bodies of US contractors; five US soldiers killed
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-04-01 11:20 Furious Iraqis hacked up the charred remains of
two of four US civilians killed in an ambush and hung them from a bridge,
drawing a horrified reaction from Washington and a vow to resist threats to make
this city "the cemetery of the Americans."
 |
An Iraqi hits a burning car with a shovel
in Fallujah where four civilian contractors were shot dead.
[AFP]
| Five U.S.
soldiers were killed in a separate attack Wednesday in an area that has become a
hotbed of resistance to the U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq.
U.S. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy coalition operations chief, said
from Baghdad that the four were killed when two vehicles, both four-wheel
drives, were ambushed and set ablaze in Fallujah.
Boiling with anger, demonstrators strung the bodies of two of the victims
from a bridge straddling the Euphrates River, let them hang and hurled rocks at
the corpses, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
"Down with the occupation, down with America," the crowd shouted.
"Fallujah will be the cemetery of the Americans," said one man, his face
hidden by a scarf.
"Revenge, revenge for Saddam (Hussein)," others shouted, the Iraqi president
whose ironfisted regime was ended by the U.S.-led war.
 |
An Iraqi boy holds a leaflet in broken
English that reads 'Fallujah, the cemetery of the Americans,' near a
burning car in Fallujah. [AFP]
| The bodies were then pulled down and placed on the ground for people to kick
and slash with knives. One body was headless. A hand and a leg were strung from
an electric pole in the main street.
By early evening, crowds were still celebrating in the streets, with people
shooting in the air and distributing candies.
At one point, U.S. Marines in armored vehicles were seen at the eastern
entrance of the town but later withdrew.
Four policemen in a car who were near the bridge at the time were seen
leaving the scene without intervening.
The State Department confirmed that all four of those killed were U.S.
citizens. They were employed by Blackwater Security Consulting of Moyock, North
Carolina, the firm said. Their identities were not immediately available.
Reaction from Washington to the incident was swift and fierce.
"These are horrific attacks by people who are trying to prevent democracy
from moving forward," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "We condemn
these attacks on the strongest possible terms."
The soldiers were killed when their convoy hit a roadside bomb northwest of
the U.S. military base in Habbaniya, 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of the Iraqi
capital, Kimmitt said.
It is thought to be the worst single incident involving coalition troops
since a U.S. military helicopter was downed January 8 near Fallujah, 50
kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, killing all nine people aboard.
The latest deaths brought to 291 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action
since May 1, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared major hostilities
over.
Both McClellan and State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the United
States would not be deterred by the attacks in its goal to restore democracy to
Iraq.
"The U.S. government is certainly committed to sticking this through to the
end," Ereli said.
Fallujah lies at the heart of the so-called "Sunni triangle", a hotbed of
die-hard opposition to the occupation, where U.S. Marines have been relieving
comrades from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.
Kimmitt said a small minority of insurgents were desperately trying to stop
Iraq's march toward democracy and progress, but would not succeed.
The key to stopping them was obtaining good intelligence, and Iraqis were
increasingly helping U.S.-led forces, he said.
U.S. military officials had been warning of a major escalation of violence
ahead of the June 30 transfer of power to Iraq.
In the southern port city of Basra, three British soldiers serving in the
coalition were wounded by a roadside bomb explosion, a British military
spokeswoman told AFP.
In other incidents Wednesday, four policemen and six civilians were wounded
in a car bomb explosion in Baquba, north of Baghdad, police said.
In the central Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, about 200 students
demonstrated outside city hall to protest recent police "repressive acts".
And in Baghdad, several thousand angry Iraqis demonstrated for the fourth
consecutive day to protest a decision by the U.S.-led coalition to shut down the
weekly newspaper of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
The coalition said the weekly was inciting violence, a charge denied by Sadr.
At the United Nations, the Security Council said Wednesday it would cooperate
with Secretary General Kofi Annan's fraud probe into the U.N. program that
oversaw Iraq's oil sales under Saddam.
"What the secretary general wanted was political support," said French
ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, winding up his one-month term as the
council president. "I think he has got that support."
Annan said last week he would launch a probe into the now closed oil-for-food
program and asked for council backing needed to investigate companies and
individuals connected to the scheme.
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
