'40 dead' as us rockets hit mosque

Dickhe_ds are just making it worse.....


'40 killed' as US targets mosque

George Wright and agencies
Wednesday April 7, 2004

A US helicopter today fired three missiles at a mosque in the besieged Iraqi city of Falluja, killing as many as 40 Iraqis, according to witnesses quoted by the Associated Press.
Part of a wall surrounding the Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque was demolished, an AP reporter at the scene said, although the mosque itself was not damaged. There was no official confirmation of casualties.

The strike came as worshippers were gathering at the mosque for afternoon prayers. Witnesses said that the bodies of the dead and injured were rushed away in cars to private homes in the area that served as makeshift hospitals.

US marines have laid siege to Falluja, which is west of the capital, Baghdad, for the past three days. The operation is aimed at quashing an insurgency by Sunni Muslim militants.

The fighting in Falluja and nearby Ramadi, where 12 US marines were killed overnight, is part of a widening revolt involving both Sunni and Shia militants and stretching from Kirkuk in the north to the British-controlled city of Basra in the south.

An estimated 33 coalition troops and 170 Iraqis have been killed in the latest outbreak of violence. The latest US casualty died when his vehicle was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade outside a police station in Baghdad today.

Also today, a top aide to radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said that his supporters - known as the al-Mahdi Army - had captured a number of soldiers from the US-led coalition.

"Some tribes have captured some occupation forces on the streets," Qays al-Khazali told a news conference in the Shia Muslim holy city of Najaf.

In a further setback for US-led forces, the Ukrainian military today withdrew most of its troops from the city of Kut after heavy fighting with Shia militants.

Yesterday, one Ukrainian soldier was killed and five were wounded in the city. The death was the first combat fatality for Ukraine's 1,650-strong contingent in Iraq.

Despite the withdrawal, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US army in Iraq, remained defiant. "We will attack to destroy the al-Mahdi Army," he said. "Those attacks will be deliberate, precise and they will be successful."

He said that US forces were working to hunt down members of the militia in the mainly Shia district of Sadr City, in Baghdad, and called on Mr Sadr to surrender. "If he wants to calm the situation ... he can turn himself in to a local Iraqi police station and he can face justice," Brig-Gen Kimmitt said.

He said that Mr Sadr's forces, along with Sunni guerrillas who have opposed US troops for month, are staging a campaign of violence to disrupt the June 30 handover of power from the US to an Iraqi government.

Within hours of his statement, Polish troops reportedly killed one of Mr Sadr's lieutenants in Kerbala.

An Iraqi police spokesman told Reuters that Murtada al-Mussawi, who ran Mr Sadr's Kerbala office, was killed in fighting with Polish troops in the centre of the city.

Mourners carried away his body, chanting "today we will free Kerbala from the Jews", according to witnesses. There was no immediate comment from Polish forces, who head a multinational division in the area.

The deteriorating situation prompted emergency talks in Washington. The US president, George Bush, today held meetings with senior administration officials and advisers amid fears that the current crisis could jeopardise the planned June 30 handover of sovereignty to the Iraq people.

With November's presidential election approaching, a decision to move the date back could prove politically damaging to Mr Bush.

There are currently around 135,000 US troops in Iraq, and Washington hopes to reduce that number to 115,000 by June. However, the military may need more soldiers to cope with the growing resistance.

US General John Abizaid has asked for "options" to be made available in the event that he needs more troops.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that Gen Abizaid will get more troops if he requests them. "At the present time, they've announced no change in their plans, but they could make such a request at any time," he said.

"They will decide what they need, and they'll get what they need."

Senior Pentagon officials believe that the current situation in Iraq is a "test of wills" between US-led troops and resistance fighters, and insist that they will prevail


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1187773,00.html