U.S. Hits Fallujah Mosque; 40 Said Killed

[kramadas]

U.S. Hits Fallujah Mosque; 40 Said Killed

27 minutes ago

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. Marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that hit a mosque filled with people Wednesday, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed.

The fighting in Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi, where commanders confirmed 12 Marines were killed late Tuesday, was part of an intensified and spreading uprising involving both Sunni and Shiites stretching from Kirkuk in the north to near Basra in the south.

An Associated Press reporter in Fallujah saw cars ferrying the bodies from the mosque, which witnesses said had been hit by three missiles. There was no immediate confirmation of casualties.

Until the mosque attack, reports had at least 30 Americans and more than 150 Iraqis dead in fighting for the two cities.

Anti-American violence intensified and spread to cities in northern Iraq (news - web sites) on Wednesday as a U.S. helicopter went down and a Marine commander confirmed 12 of his men had been killed in fighting west of Baghdad.

Scores of Iraqis also have been wounded, as mosques called for a holy war against Americans and women carried guns in the streets.

American and allied forces fought both Sunni and Shiite Muslim militants nationwide in a continuation of the heaviest fighting since Baghdad fell to U.S. troops a year ago this week.

Marines fought for control in the Sunni Triangle cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, and soldiers battled Shiite militiamen in cities stretching from near Kirkuk in the largely Kurdish north to holy cities in the Shiite heartland to the south of Baghdad.

U.S. Marines have vowed to pacify the violent towns of Ramadi and Fallujah that had been a center of the guerrilla insurgency seeking to oust the U.S.-led occupation force. The 12 dead 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 along a one-mile front.

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

A U.S. helicopter crashed in Baqouba, 30 miles north of Baghdad, as American soldiers fought militiamen of fiery anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose forces have been responsible for much of the violence outside of Ramadi and Fallujah. There was no word on casualties in the crash in a residential neighborhood, which was witnessed by Associated Press photographer Mohammed Adnan.

Ukrainian-led forces and al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army clashed in the city of Kut, southeast of Baghdad, overnight, and at least 12 Iraqis were reported killed and 20 wounded, hospital officials said. Witnesses reported the gunmen killed a British civilian working for a foreign security company in the city.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said its troops were forced to evacuate Kut early Wednesday after al-Sadr forces hit the position with mortar fire throughout the night.

"There were no Ukrainian casualties, but several dozen militants were killed," said Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Andriy Lysenko.

In a significant expansion of the fighting, Iraqis protesting in solidarity with Fallujah residents clashed with U.S. troops in the northern town of Hawijah, near Kirkuk. Eight Iraqis were killed, and 10 Iraqis and four Americans were wounded, police said.

In Baghdad, a top American general said the United States would press the offensive.

"The coalition and Iraqi security forces will continue deliberate, precise and powerful offensive operations to destroy the al-Mahdi Army throughout Iraq," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's deputy head of operations, told reporters in Baghdad.

He 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. "If he wants to calm the situation ... he can turn himself in to a local Iraqi police station and he can face justice," Kimmitt said.

Despite the call, there was no sign al-Sadr's forces had eased their attacks:

_ Shooting was heard as his militiamen took the streets of Baqouba and blasted the governor's office with rocket-propelled grenades.

_ Militiamen battled Spanish soldiers in Najaf, south of Baghdad. An Iraqi taxi driver was killed in the crossfire, 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.

Al-Sadr had urged Iraqis to rise up against the U.S. occupation and vowed to die rather than be captured by U.S. forces. "America has shown its evil intentions, and the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it," he said in a statement. "They must defend their rights by any means they see fit."

The fighting that has killed 12 Marines began at the start of the week when they surrounded Fallujah, promising to capture or kill those responsible for the brutal slayings and mutilations of four American civilian whose bodies were hung from a Euphrates River bridge last week.

On Tuesday, however, insurgents opened a new front with a bloody attack on Marines in the nearby town of Ramadi.

Gunmen hiding in Ramadi's main cemetery opened fire on U.S. patrols, sparking a gunbattle in alleys and near the governor's palace, witnesses said, adding that at least two Iraqis were killed.

Signs were emerging of growing sympathy between Sunni Muslim insurgents and al-Sadr's Shiite movement. In mainly Sunni Ramadi, portraits of al-Sadr were posted on government buildings, schools and mosques, along with graffiti praising him for his "heroic deeds" and "valiant uprising against the occupier."

Iraq's Shiite majority has largely avoided anti-U.S. violence, shunning al-Sadr's virulent anti-U.S. rhetoric as well as the insurgency led by Sunnis in central Iraq. U.S. officials have expressed concern that al-Sadr could start cooperating with the Sunni guerrillas.

With fighting intensifying ahead of the June 30 handover of power to an Iraqi government, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said American commanders in Iraq would get additional troops if needed. None has asked so far, he said.

"They will decide what they need, and they will get what they need," Rumsfeld said.

U.S. authorities launched their offensive against al-Sadr and his militia after a series of weekend uprisings in Baghdad and cities and towns to the south that took a heavy toll in both American and Iraqi lives.

The fight against al-Sadr, who has drawn backing from young and impoverished Shiites with rousing sermons demanding a U.S. withdrawal, sent his black-garbed militiamen against coalition troops Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

With confirmation of the 12 dead Marines, the American death toll since the war was at least 626.

[vicman]

it's getting from bad to worse.

[vicman]

In Iraq, Without Options

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, April 7, 2004; Page A31

So now the president's war of choice has led to an occupation with no good options.

The Bush administration's plan is to hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqi Governing Council on June 30. Just how that council will sustain itself in power, however, is increasingly unclear after the upheaval of the past few days. Its own police force, which the United States has spent time and treasure recruiting and training, all but collapsed during the uprising of Moqtada Sadr's Shiite militia.

In Kufa, Najaf and Baghdad's own Sadr City, the government's new cops handed over police cars and police stations to the militia without any reported resistance. In some instances, the cops actually joined forces with Sadr's militants.

So much for our thin blue line.

Within Iraq, there are thousands of current and potential gunmen willing to fight for their people and their creeds -- Kurdish automony, Sunni hegemony, Shiite control, an Islamic republic. But the force charged with defending a pluralistic, united Iraq just went AWOL under fire.

It's not that there aren't lots of Iraqis committed to a democratic, relatively nonsectarian nation. But that is just one faith among many in post-Hussein Iraq. And by keeping sole control of the occupation, the White House has ensured that the cause of pluralistic nationhood has become disastrously intermingled with support for the U.S. occupation.

That intermingling will only get worse after June 30. The provisional government will assume power knowing that its security will depend entirely on U.S. forces. That's not likely to work wonders for its popularity, its legitimacy or, well, its security.

In the events of the past week, Sadr has emerged as Iraq's version of Lenin at the Finland Station. In the months after the overthrow of the czar, the Russian left largely agreed to cooperate with the provisional government within an emerging parliamentary democracy. Until, that is, Lenin's sealed train pulled into Petrograd, and the once-exiled leader told his astounded followers that they would not work with the provisional government and that they would, in fact, work to overthrow it.

I'm not predicting that Sadr will succeed in evading U.S. forces and in time set up an Islamic republic as extreme as Lenin and Stalin's Soviet republic -- much as he may wish to. But, like Lenin, he has tapped into a popular sentiment that is far broader than the size of his own narrow legion might suggest. It's also clear that the civil authority that is supposed to take power June 30 will have few reliable domestic forces to defend it -- a situation remniscent of the one confronting Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the Russian provisional government who had no loyal forces at his disposal when the Bolsheviks seized power.

What the Iraqi provisional government will have is the Americans. It would be far better off if it had a force under the U.N. banner, with troops from nations that had opposed as well as supported the war, troops from Arab nations in particular.

But the time to have built such a force, I fear, has come and gone. The administration's utter failure to envision the problems that a U.S.-controlled occupation would encounter kept it from going to the United Nations until the situation on the ground was barely tenable. It's still worth trying to get a U.N. high commissioner to supplant Paul Bremer, but it grows harder to imagine why the U.N. would sign on at this late date.

In any event, the administration still shows scant desire to surrender its control of the growing chaos. Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's commissioner in Iraq, has just given up his post in reported frustration over his inability to affect any of Bremer's decisions. And rather than internationalize control, it's increasingly apparent that we've opted to privatize our force -- relying on private security guards to supplement our official force on the ground. The decision epitomizes much that's wrong with the Bush presidency -- in particular, its desire to evade responsibility and accountability for its actions. If the bodies of the security guards killed in Fallujah had not been mutilated, how many American voters would have noticed? One recent poll shows that near-plurality of Americans now favors our leaving Iraq. But precisely because this was not a war we had to fight, just up and leaving would be politically and morally duplicitous. We wrested control of Iraq when we did not have to, and leaving it to its own devices as sectarian violence grows worse would be a dismal end. The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone.

meyersonh@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56304-2004Apr6.html

[jamiroguy1]

Iraq is in shambles. Bombing mosques and killing/capturing clerics isn't the answer.

This is a sad day. I expect it to get even worse.

[siceone]

While this is a trying time I think that out of this it was come out the best for the iraqi people, because we are going to stay and finish the job.

[jamiroguy1]

Originally posted by siceone

While this is a trying time I think that out of this it was come out the best for the iraqi people, because we are going to stay and finish the job.

Well if bombing mosques is getting the job done, we need to get to more bombing of mosques then and hurry up and end this.

[siceone]

you can't expect thses idiots to take weapons into a mosque and then fire upon american soliders and then expect the american soliders not to return fire.. when you use a mosque for a barricade it becomes a barricade and ceases to be a mosque.

[ghhhhhost]

Originally posted by siceone

While this is a trying time I think that out of this it was come out the best for the iraqi people, because we are going to stay and finish the job.

...now that is funny..i hope u dont sincerely believe that..

as for the mosque bombing..so what..who cares..bomb the piss out of them. they have no regard for christian monasteries in kosovo..burning hundreds down... so i could care less right about now about their mosques

[mr mahs]

Whats funny is diffrent sites give diffrent accounts of where the fighting is occuring..

[vicman]

Originally posted by siceone

you can't expect thses idiots to take weapons into a mosque and then fire upon american soliders and then expect the american soliders not to return fire.. when you use a mosque for a barricade it becomes a barricade and ceases to be a mosque.

that's true. if they were fired upon from the mosque then you have all the right to return fire.

[jamiroguy1]

Al Jazeera is airing video of the damage.

http://www.aljazeera.net/showMedia.asp?item_No=217447&videoPath=&oldMediaItURL=1_217447

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

Al Jazeera is airing video of the damage.

http://www.aljazeera.net/showMedia.asp?item_No=217447&videoPath=&oldMediaItURL=1_217447

Aljazeera is only adding to the problem

[kramadas]

Originally posted by mr mahs

Whats funny is diffrent sites give diffrent accounts of where the fighting is occuring..

Problem is its erupting all over the place...now there's talk of collusion between the Sunnis and Shi'ites.

[kramadas]

Originally posted by mr mahs

Aljazeera is only adding to the problem

from an American point of view.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by raver_mania

Problem is its erupting all over the place...now there's talk of collusion between the Sunnis and Shi'ites.

Al Sadr support is from a small fraction of the shiats population, the majority denounce his rhetoric as counter productive.

What kills me is that Aljazeera is reporting that 90civilians were killed. If you look at the insurgents there wearing civilian cloths so how do they know they were civilians? I am not doubting that civilains have been hurt or killed but Al jazeera doesn't mention the casulaties as part of the militia only as civilians...

Read this a couple of times and it jumps up at you...

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/660FF109-9E21-4AF8-BCA3-C39E0FE67917.htm

[jamiroguy1]

Originally posted by mr mahs

Aljazeera is only adding to the problem

Add the Matt Drudge to that list...I got the al jazeera link from his site.

[g420]

Originally posted by raver_mania

U.S. Hits Fallujah Mosque; 40 Said Killed

27 minutes ago

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. Marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that hit a mosque filled with people Wednesday, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed.

.

Cowards shouldn't be hiding in houses of worship anyway, fuck em

[normalnoises]

Originally posted by mr mahs

Aljazeera is only adding to the problem

From a neocons' (or a Texans') point of view.

[mrmatas2277]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

Well if bombing mosques is getting the job done, we need to get to more bombing of mosques then and hurry up and end this.

thats where they are hiding...what do u want?

[ghhhhhost]

Originally posted by mr mahs

Al Sadr support is from a small fraction of the shiats population, the majority denounce his rhetoric as counter productive.

What kills me is that Aljazeera is reporting that 90civilians were killed. If you look at the insurgents there wearing civilian cloths so how do they know they were civilians? I am not doubting that civilains have been hurt or killed but Al jazeera doesn't mention the casulaties as part of the militia only as civilians...

oh shut the fuck up with this how do we know if theyre civilians or militia crap...

if this was a different struggle ud b screamin about how theyre killin innocent civilians..it just goes to prove how bullshit and biased ur views r...

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by ghhhhhost

oh shut the fuck up with this how do we know if theyre civilians or militia crap...

if this was a different struggle ud b screamin about how theyre killin innocent civilians..it just goes to prove how bullshit and biased ur views r...

who?

[jamiroguy1]

Originally posted by mrmatas2277

thats where they are hiding...what do u want?

My point is, this doesn't help change the hearts and minds of the iraqi people by blowing up their place of worship. Not a good move in my opinion. It just fuels more anger and hatred and further escalates this bullshit.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by ghhhhhost

oh shut the fuck up with this how do we know if theyre civilians or militia crap...

if this was a different struggle ud b screamin about how theyre killin innocent civilians..it just goes to prove how bullshit and biased ur views r...

It went over your head you ignorant fuck... Look at the pics jerkoff, these poeple are walking around the city in their pajamas with RPG's.. What do you think happens when one gets killed? you don't think other militia take their weapons? Is your feeble mind uncapable of understanding that a media struggle is taking place, where a live Iraqi insurgent is suddenly turned into a civilian onced they've been taken out? Can't you see whats happening?

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

My point is, this doesn't help change the hearts and minds of the iraqi people by blowing up their place of worship. Not a good move in my opinion. It just fuels more anger and hatred and further escalates this bullshit.

Fuckem I am tired of the Pentagon handling these fucks with white kiddie gloves

[jamiroguy1]

Originally posted by mr mahs

Fuckem I am tired of the Pentagon handling these fucks with white kiddie gloves

Operation Iraqi Freedom my ass.