- More than 280 Iraqis have been killed and 400 wounded
this week in the U.S. Marines' siege of insurgents in Falluja, the director
of the city's hospital, Taher Al-Issawi said on Thursday. "We also
know of dead and wounded in various places buried under rubble, but we
cannot reach them because of the fighting", he said. Meanwhile, the
coalition death toll in the fighting has reached 37, most of them Americans.
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- Earlier, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said
the United States has not lost control over Iraq, following the recent
attacks and riots in Iraq. However, some U.S. troops scheduled to leave
Iraq soon might be kept there longer to deal with the surge in violence,
Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.
-
- Rumsfeld said that the violence is the work of a few
"thugs, gangs and terrorists" and is not a popular uprising over
the U.S.-led occupation. He warned, however, that the violence in the holy
cities throughout Iraq may continue in he next few days and called on Muslim
pilgrims to refrain from visiting them.
-
- "The number of people involved in those battles
is relatively small," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference,
accompanied by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers.
-
- Myers said the fighting came in two broad categories.
West of Baghdad, in cities such as Ramadi and Fallujah, the main opposition
is "former regime loyalists," including supporters of former
president Saddam Hussein, and anti-American foreign fighters loyal to Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi.
-
- In Fallujah, U.S. troops are going after those responsible
for last week's deaths and mutilations of four American civilian security
officers. Nine people have been arrested, including some of those believed
responsible, Rumsfeld said.
-
- In the eastern sections of Baghdad and in a half-dozen
cities in southern Iraq, the fighting is the doing of radical Shiite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr and those who support him, Myers said.
-
- Myers and Rumsfeld repeatedly called al-Sadr a murderer.
?This is not a Shi?ite uprising,? Myers said. ?Al-Sadr has a small group
of supporters.? The White House called on al-Sadr to turn himself in to
the authorities to put an end to the violence.
-
- They added that al-Sadr had between 1,000 and 6,000 fighters
in his militia. It's unclear whether al-Sadr's militia is the only group
fighting in those areas, Myers said.
-
- In response to reports that the US had targeted a mosque
in the Iraqi flashpoint town of Falluja, killing some 40 people on Wednesday,
the US military's deputy head of operations, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, told
reporters in Baghdad that an US F-16 fighter jet had dropped a 225 kg.
bomb on the mosque.
-
- Kimmitt said that from photos of the mosque he had seen,
"the actual mosque structure itself" was not damaged. "We
tried to hit a group of guerillas behind a mosque wall and not the building
itself?, he said. Kimmitt did not confirm the reported fatality figure.
-
- "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.
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