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10 year old boy grinds his
heel into a burned head: "Where is Bush?" the
little boy yelled. "Let him come here and see
this!" The US Army will hunt
this boy down and fire a bullet into his head, I
hope. |
FALLUJA, Iraq, March 31 — Four
Americans working for a security company were ambushed
and killed Wednesday, and an enraged mob then jubilantly
dragged the burned bodies through the streets of
downtown Falluja, hanging at least two corpses from a
bridge over the Euphrates River.
Less than 15 miles away, in the same area of the
increasingly violent Sunni Triangle, five American
soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb ripped through
their armored personnel carrier.
The violence was one of the most brutal outbursts of
anti-American rage since the war in Iraq began more than
a year ago. And the steadily deteriorating situation in
the Falluja area, a center of anti-American hostility
west of Baghdad, has become so precarious that no
American or Iraqi forces responded to the attack against
the civilians, who worked for a North Carolina company.
American officials said the civilians were traveling in
two sport utility vehicles although some witnesses in
Falluja said there were four. "Two got away; two got
trapped," said Muhammad Furhan, a taxi driver.
It is not clear what the four Americans were doing in
Falluja or where they were going. But just as they were
passing a strip of stationery stores and kebab shops
around 10:30 a.m., masked gunmen jumped into the street
and blasted their vehicles with assault rifles.
Witnesses said the civilians did not shoot back.
There are a number of police stations in Falluja and a
base of more than 4,000 marines nearby, but even as the
security guards were being swarmed and their vehicles
set on fire, sending plumes of inky smoke over the
closed shops of the city, there were no ambulances, no
fire engines and no assistance.
Instead, Falluja's streets were thick with men and boys
and chaos.
Men with scarves over their faces hurled bricks into the
blazing vehicles. A group of boys yanked a smoldering
body into the street and ripped it apart. Someone then
tied a chunk of flesh to a rock and tossed it over a
telephone wire.
"Viva mujahedeen!" shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver.
"Long live the resistance!"
Nearby, a boy no older than 10 ground his heel into a
burned head. "Where is Bush?" the boy yelled. "Let him
come here and see this!"
Masked men gathered around him, punching their fists
into the air. The streets filled with hundreds of
people. "Falluja is the graveyard of Americans!" they
chanted.
Several news crews filmed the mayhem. The images of a
frenzied crowd mutilating bodies were reminiscent of the
scene from Somalia in 1993, when a mob dragged the body
of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
That moment shifted public opinion and eventually led to
an American pullout.
The White House blamed terrorists and remnants of Saddam
Hussein's former government for the attack. "This is a
despicable attack," Scott McClellan, the White House
spokesman, told reporters, adding that "there are some
that are doing everything they can to prevent" a
transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June
30.
American military officials said the violence in Falluja,
however chilling, would not scare them away. "The
insurgents in Falluja are testing us," said Capt. Chris
Logan, a marine. "They're testing our resolve. But it's
not like we're going to leave. We just got here."
Captain Logan, who is stationed at a large walled base
on the outskirts of the city, said Falluja was becoming
"an area of greater concern." Last week, a contingent of
marines, who recently took over responsibility for
Falluja from the Army, fought gunmen in a battle in
which one marine, a television cameraman and several
Iraqi civilians were killed.
"This is one of those areas in Iraq that is definitely
squirrelly," Captain Logan said.
Many people in Falluja said they believed that they had
won an important victory on Wednesday. They insisted
that the four security guards, who were driving in
unmarked sport utility vehicles, were working for the
Central Intelligence Agency.
"This is what these spies deserve," said Salam Aldulayme,
a 28-year-old Falluja resident.
Intelligence sources in Washington said the four were
not working for the C.I.A. They worked for Blackwater
Security Consulting of Moyock, N.C., providing security
for food delivery in the Falluja area, according to a
statement from the company. The occupation authorities
have hired hundreds of private security guards for a
range of duties.
Witnesses in Falluja said several of the men had Defense
Department badges, though such identification is common
for contractors working for the occupation. A senior
military officer said the four were retired Special
Operations forces — three Navy Seals and one Army
Ranger. American officials declined to immediately
identify the dead men.
In the last three weeks, more than 10 foreign civilians
have been killed in Iraq, though no attack provoked the
spasm of brutality that followed this one.
Since the war in Iraq began, Falluja has been a flash
point of violence. Of all the places in Iraq, it is
where anti-American hatred is the strongest. The area is
predominantly Sunni Muslim. Many families remain loyal
to the captured dictator, Mr. Hussein, who is also a
Sunni Muslim. Over the years, Mr. Hussein cultivated a
network of patronage and privilege among the tribes and
elders of Falluja. Many became top army officers. Some
ran big companies. When Mr. Hussein was ousted last
April, the people here lost their jobs, their businesses
and their power.
That set off a cycle of killing and responses, a bloody
feud between a clannish society and occupiers from
thousands of miles away. Last April, American soldiers
killed more than 15 civilians at a demonstration in
Falluja. In November, an American helicopter was shot
down outside the town, killing 16. Townspeople danced on
the wreckage.
In February, insurgents mounted a brazen daylight attack
against a convoy carrying Gen. John P. Abizaid, the
American commander in the Middle East. He escaped
unscathed. But two days later, gunmen blasted their way
into a Falluja jail, killing at least 15 police officers
and freeing dozens of prisoners.
Last week, the First Marine Expeditionary Force formally
took control of the city, population 300,000, which sits
on a desert shelf about 35 miles west of Baghdad. Marine
commanders said they were going to try a different
approach from the Army, which had basically pulled back
to bases ringing Falluja and left policing up to the
locals.
"We're doing work outside the wire," Captain Logan said.
"We're running patrols. We're rebuilding things. We're
working with Iraqis."
Most of the Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad,
has become so unsafe that American forces stick to their
bases, their movement usually limited to heavily guarded
convoys.
Around 7 a.m. on Wednesday, an Army convoy passing
through the town of Habbaniya, west of Falluja, rolled
over an I.E.D., or improvised explosive device. The bomb
was buried in the road and blew up under an armored
personnel carrier, killing five soldiers. Roadside bombs
are everyday occurrences in Iraq. But few have claimed
as many casualties. "It was a very large I.E.D.," said
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for
the occupation forces.
A few hours later the men from Blackwater Security drove
into downtown Falluja. After they were shot, the scene
turned grisly. A crowd of more than 300 people flooded
into the streets. Men swarmed around the vehicles. Some
witnesses said the Americans were still alive when one
boy came running up with a jug of gasoline. Soon, both
vehicles were fireballs.
"Everybody here is happy with this," Mr. Furhan, the
taxi driver, said. "There is no question."
After the fires cooled, a group of boys tore the corpses
out of the vehicles. The crowd cheered them on. The boys
dragged the blackened bodies to the iron bridge over the
Euphrates River, about a mile away. Some people said
they saw four bodies hanging over the water, some said
only two. At sunset, nurses from a nearby hospital tried
to take the bodies away.
Men with guns threatened to kill the nurses. The nurses
left. The bodies remained.
Christine Hauser contributed
reporting from Baghdad for this article.
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