Fallujah Mosque Bombed by US: 
Rocket and 500-Pound, Laser-Guided Bomb

U.S. Hits Mosque Compound; 40 Said Killed 
BASSEM MROUE and ABDUL-QADER SAADI / AP 7apr04

FALLUJAH, Iraq—U.S. Marines in the third day of a battle to pacify this Sunni Muslim city fired a rocket and dropped a 500-pound, laser-guided bomb on a mosque compound Wednesday, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to key cities in Iraq.

The fighting in Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi—just east of Baghdad—has killed 15 Marines since Monday and was part of an intensified uprising involving other Sunni towns in northern and central Iraq, and Shiite population centers south of the capital.

Marines waged a six-hour battle around the Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque with militants holed up inside before a Cobra helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at the base of its minaret and an F-16 dropped the bomb, said Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne.

The fight began when a Marine vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the mosque, wounding five Marines, and a large U.S. force converged on it, Byrne said.

Witnesses said the strike came as worshippers had gathered for afternoon prayers.

An Associated Press reporter saw cars ferrying out dead and wounded. Witnesses said part of a wall surrounding the mosque compound was destroyed but the main building was not damaged.

In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told CNN that from photos of the mosque he had seen, "the actual mosque structure itself" was not damaged.

Its minaret was damaged, but still standing, an AP reporter said.

"It is a holy place, there is no doubt about it," Kimmitt added. "It has a special status under the Geneva Convention that it can't be attacked.

"However, it can be attacked when there is a military necessity brought on by the fact that the enemy is storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence and executing violence from its grounds," he said.

Because casualties were rushed to makeshift clinics in private homes and mosques, the number of dead and wounded was unclear.

During fighting elsewhere in Fallujah, U.S. forces seized another mosque, the al-Muadidi mosque, and a Marine climbed its minaret and fired down on gunmen, witnesses said. Insurgents hit the minaret with rocket-propelled grenades, causing it to partly collapse, the AP reporter said.

Insurgents also blew up two highway overpasses into the city to prevent U.S. troops from using them. A helicopter rocketed three houses, and the reporter saw at least five wounded people, including a young boy, being pulled out of one them.

Byrne said the Marines controlled about a quarter of Fallujah.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said U.S. forces launched the operation in Fallujah to capture insurgents involved in attacks on Americans, including the ones who mutilated and burned the bodies of four U.S. civilians ambushed last week. He said the troops had pictures and names of those involved and were not attacking the town as a whole.

But militants, who have wide popular support, fiercely resisted the U.S. raids into the city center and attacked American troops encircling the city of 200,000. The intensity of the resistance apparently prompted U.S. forces to bring in helicopters, tanks and AC130 gunships that have pounded suspected militant sites in the densely populated neighborhoods.

Since Sunday, 34 Americans, two other coalition soldiers and more than 190 Iraqis had been killed in fighting across the country. The Iraqi figure did not include those killed at the mosque.

Kimmitt vowed to "destroy" the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which has been behind the wave of attacks and street fighting with coalition troops in southern cities and Baghdad this week.

Al-Sadr said Iraq will become "another Vietnam" for the United States unless it transfers power to Iraqis who are not connected with the U.S.-led occupation authority.

"I call upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army, to help them in the transfer of power to honest Iraqis," al-Sadr said in a statement from his office in the southern city of Najaf. "Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers."

Al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army launched heavy gunbattles with coalition forces in the streets of three southern cities Wednesday and, for the first time, in the north. Al-Sadr fighters battled American troops in the town of Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, hitting a U.S. helicopter with small arms fire. The OH-58 Kiowa chopper was damaged and forced to land, but the two crewmembers were unharmed.

And Shiite gunmen drove Ukrainian forces out of the southern city of Kut—raising concerns over the ability of U.S. allies to control al-Sadr's uprising.

After gunbattles overnight killed 12 Iraqis, the Ukrainians withdrew from Kut, and al-Sadr followers swept into their base, seized weapons stores and planted their flag on a nearby grain silo.

The black-garbed gunmen of the al-Mahdi Army also had virtual control of Kufa and Karbala, where Iraqi police lay low, allowing militiamen to move freely and acting only to prevent looting. Militiamen in Karbala clashed with Polish patrols that moved through their areas, and a cleric who was a senior official in al-Sadr's office in the city was killed.

Al-Sadr and his militia are unpopular among most of Iraq's Shiite majority, and there was no sign that the Shiite public in the south was rallying to their side to launch a wider popular uprising.

But the week's fighting showed a strength that few expected from the al-Mahdi Army.

In a statement Wednesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, called for an end to the violence by all sides.

Al-Sistani "condemned the methods used by occupation forces in the current escalating situation in Iraq ... and any action that disturbs order and prevents officials from carrying out their duties," the statement said.

There also were signs of sympathy for the Sadr revolt by Sunni insurgents, who have been fighting the U.S.-led occupation for months and have often chided their Shiite countrymen for not joining in.

Portraits of al-Sadr and graffiti praising his "valiant uprising" appeared on mosque and government building walls in the Sunni city of Ramadi. Peaceful protests in support of al-Sadr occurred in the northern cities of Mosul and Rashad.

Monday night in Baghdad, al-Sadr gunmen went to a mainly Sunni neighborhood to join with insurgents there in firing on U.S. Humvees—the only known instance so far of Sunni and Shiite militants joining forces.

The military also announced the deaths of two U.S. soldiers—one killed in the Sunni Triangle city of Balad, north of Baghdad, on Tuesday, the other on Wednesday in an RPG attack on his convoy in the capital.

Anger was also spreading over the U.S. siege of Fallujah, one of the Sunni insurgents' strongest bastions, west of Baghdad. Iraqis protesting the operation clashed with U.S. troops outside the northern city of Kirkuk in fighting that left eight Iraqis dead and 10 wounded.

The 12 Marines were killed Tuesday in Ramadi, where Maj. Gen. James Mattis, 1st Marine Division commander, said his forces still were fighting insurgents that included Syrian mercenaries.

In Fallujah, dozens of insurgents carrying RPGs and automatic weapons, their faces wrapped in scarves, dug in around an eastern entrance to the city, setting up sandbags. Three Marines have been killed there since Monday, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Mosque loudspeakers blared calls for jihad, or holy war, and women were seen carrying guns in the streets.

Sixteen children and eight women were reported killed when warplanes struck four houses late Tuesday, said Hatem Samir, a Fallujah Hospital official.

On Tuesday, insurgents opened a new front with the bloody attack in Ramadi. Gunmen hiding in Ramadi's main cemetery opened fire on U.S. patrols, sparking a gunbattle, witnesses said, adding that at least two Iraqis were killed.

Kimmitt called for the surrender of al-Sadr, who is named in an arrest warrant for involvement in the murder of a rival Shiite cleric almost a year ago.

There was no sign, however, that al-Sadr's forces had eased their attacks:

• Militiamen battled Spanish soldiers in Najaf, and a taxi driver was killed, a hospital official said.
• Clashes erupted overnight in Baghdad's Sadr City, killing four Iraqis and wounding seven others, doctors said.
• Militiamen traded fire with Polish troops in Karbala overnight, killing two Iranian tourists, witnesses said.
• Gunmen attacked a police car Tuesday night in Youssifiya, south of Baghdad, killing two policemen.

Marines Fight for Control of Fallujah, Inch by Inch 

One Killed, 6 Wounded in Wednesday's Fighting 

PAMELA CONSTABLE / Washington Post 7apr04

FALLUJAH, Iraq—Hundreds of Marines inched closer into the heart of this embattled city Wednesday, darting across roads and crouching on corners as the echo of mortars and rifles mingled with the wail of prayers and warnings messages from minarets across the city.

One Marine was killed and six were wounded by rifle and grenade fire, while news services quoted witnesses who said more than two dozen Iraqis were killed when U.S. aircraft attacked a mosque compound where insurgents had taken shelter and fired on U.S. forces. Marine officers said, however, that there was no sign of casualties at the mosque. The conflicting accounts were not immediately reconcilable.

Marine officials here defended the bombing of the mosque, a highly controversial act in a Muslim society, saying it was a military necessity.

And even as they faced sustained armed resistance, they said they had successfully gained control of one-quarter of Fallujah, a city of 300,000 that is a cauldron of anti-coalition anger and violence.

"We do not attack mosques willy-nilly, but we will fire back at any place where we take direct fire," said Lt. Col. Brennan T. Byrne, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, one of two regiments that entered Fallujah on Monday as part of a massive operation to eliminate anti-occupation forces from the city, which is about 35 miles west of Baghdad.

Byrne and other officers said about 40 armed men gathered at the Abdul Aziz Samarai Mosque Wednesday morning and set up bunkers outside it, from which they opened fire on U.S. troops with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, wounding four Marines sitting in a Humvee several blocks away.

After ground attacks failed to dislodge the fighters, Marine officers at different command posts in the city debated via radio whether to bring in larger weapons, and how to minimize civilian casualties. Finally, in mid-afternoon, they called in air strikes that seriously damaged the mosque.

Byrne initially said all the fighters inside were presumed killed, and Iraqi news reports said numerous bodies had been taken to Fallujah's main hospital. In a late-evening briefing, however, Byrne said his troops had found no bodies, bloodstains or weapons when they entered the mosque after the bombing.

"They profaned the mosque by their actions," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, who visited the operation command center in an abandoned factory Wednesday along with Gen. Michael W. Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps. "If they decide to fight from a mosque, we will take them out, but we will also be precise about how we do it."

There was also fighting around a second mosque in the same district, a magnificent blue-domed building near the entrance to the city. Insurgents had gathered there and exchanged fire with Marines Tuesday, and Marines found weapons and ammunition there Wednesday.

All day, several companies of Marines fanned out through the southeastern part of the city, advancing west block by block and taking up rooftop positions in an effort to expand their turf and close in on clusters of fighters who hid in buildings, fired on the troops and then slipped away.

As the troops made their way along residential blocks, aiming their rifles into every alley and open yard, families peeped out from behind windows and metal gates. Some tried to speak or wave, but the Marines motioned them hurriedly to get back inside. At one point, a red-flaring rocket raced toward them from the Samarai mosque.

Black plumes of smoke rose as Iraqi mortar rounds fell, some landing within yards of the main Marine compound, and rifle fire echoed across the city hour after hour. U.S. military drone planes circled overhead, taking photographs of embattled areas, and attack helicopters zoomed through the urban skies.

After the midday call to prayer, chants continued to emanate from minarets, calling on God to protect Fallujah and end the fighting. Iraqi translators working for the Marines here said the chants called on residents to be patient and stay home, but some Arabic-speaking journalists said they had called for holy war against the American invaders.

After dark, dozens of mortars struck near the Marine command headquarters in the factory, where several foreign journalists are also staying. One mortar struck the yard of a family immediately next door, killing an 11-year-old girl and wounding her sister.

Many Marines involved in the operation, known as Vigilant Resolve, were also deployed in Iraq during the U.S.-led invasion one year ago, and some said the battle for Fallujah, now in its third day, was proving more dangerous and unpredictable than the military takeover of Baghdad last April.

"This time it's the little things that can kill you," said Cpl. Richard Savicke, 21, who was taking a break from street patrols in a car repair shop that had been turned into an urban command post. "If you gaze off for a moment, or you take a turn too slowly, someone may be waiting to shoot you."

Corpsman Percy Davila, 29, nodded in agreement, saying the current operation is "more like a real war. It is urban and scary. There are windows everywhere, bullets and [rocket-propelled] grenades whizzing over your head. When you cross the street, you just put down your head and pray."

Inside the repair shop, located on the front line between a deserted industrial zone and the volatile residential areas to the west, one mechanics' pit was full of food ration kits and cases of water.

Just outside, another pit held two Iraqi detainees, handcuffed and hooded, who moaned uncomfortably.

One detainee asked for water, and a translator brought him a bottle and slipped off his hood long enough to sip. The other kept saying he had to urinate, so finally the translator and Marine led him across the street, still hooded and cuffed, behind a cargo container.

Just around the corner lay the corpse of a tall Iraqi man, covered in blood, who Marine officers said had fired on their troops Tuesday and been shot. It was the first body recovered by the Marines, since most fallen insurgents have been immediately dragged away by their associates for treatment or burial.

While pressing ahead with the occupation of Fallujah, the Marines have been trying to appeal to its residents with leaflets that differentiate between ordinary civilians and anti-American adversaries. One is a "Wanted" poster with snapshots of men in the angry crowd that attacked and mutilated the bodies of four U.S. security contractors on March 31.

The other is a letter in Arabic from Mattis, which Marines are handing to civilians when their relatives are detained. It promises that they will be given good treatment, including food, water, medical care, time to pray and clean bathrooms for washing.

Marine officials here continued to broadly describe their opponents as "anti-coalition forces" including a mix of Islamic extremists, followers of former president Saddam Hussein and criminals, along with a few foreign fighters. But several translators for the Marines, who meet with local residents and question detainees, offered a slightly different description.

"A lot of Iraqis hate us. They believe we are invaders who will take away their country," said one translator, Fahim Salim. In Fallujah, he said, some enemy fighters are Sunni Muslims who fear the U.S. occupation will bring Shiite Muslims to power, while others are former soldiers, with expert training and access to weapons, who are now jobless and desperate.

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57805-2004Apr7?language=printer 8apr04