- America abandoned restraint in Iraq yesterday and launched
an all-out attempt to impose its will on the country, bombing a mosque
compound and promising to destroy the militia of the rebel Shia leader,
Moqtada al-Sadr.
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- In the heaviest fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein
a year ago, US forces dropped two 500lb bombs and fired rockets on a mosque
in Fallujah, the centre of the Sunni insurgency against the occupation.
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- Iraqis said that at least 25 people had died, raising
fears of an explosion of anger in the Muslim world.
-
- Last night there were signs of the trouble spreading
north when police in Kirkuk reported that 13 people had been killed and
20 wounded by American soldiers in a battle that erupted during demonstrations
against the bombing of the mosque.
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- US commanders said the bombs were dropped after insurgents
took refuge in the mosque compound.
-
- Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad: "My understanding
is that we went after insurgents who were hiding behind the outer wall,
not the mosque itself."
-
- He said that mosques were generally protected from assault
but that the rules of engagement permitted US forces to return fire if
they came under attack.
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- "I understand there was a large casualty toll taken
by the enemy, who were abusing that mosque and everything it stood for.
When you start using a religious location for military purposes, it loses
its protected status."
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- The attack was launched on the fourth day of the intensifying
conflict, with coalition forces fighting on two fronts against Sunnis and
Shi'ites and as new flashpoints flared across the country.
-
- President George W Bush spoke to Tony Blair about the
upsurge of fighting before their talks next week as their opponents pressed
them to clarify their plans to hand over sovereignty to Iraq on June 30.
But officials in Washington and London insisted there was no crisis.
-
- Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said coalition
forces faced a "serious" problem but played down the scale of
the insurgency.
-
- "The stakes are high," he said. But he insisted
that the unrest was a "power play" by a small number of "increasingly
desperate terrorists".
-
- While the fighting worsened in Fallujah and Ramadi, west
of Baghdad, the coalition effectively surrendered a provincial capital
to gunmen loyal to Sadr.
-
- The Coalition Provisional Authority's headquarters in
the city of Kut, 100 miles south-east of Baghdad, was evacuated under heavy
fire from Sadr's militia. Thirteen Britons were among those who fled as
a South African security contractor was killed.
-
- Ukrainian forces failed to defend the compound and pulled
out of Kut. Previously, only Iraqi policemen had abandoned their positions
under attack from Sadr's Mahdi army.
-
- The rout of the Ukrainian forces underlined the weakness
of the coalition forces in most of the south. Coalition sources said the
allied armies were not in a position to confront Sadr's militia except
in Baghdad.
-
- But Gen Kimmitt was confident. He said: "The coalition
and Iraqi security forces will continue deliberate, precise and powerful
offensive operations to destroy the Mahdi army throughout Iraq." Sadr
should "turn himself in".
-
- The biggest of the offensives was on Sunni insurgents
in Fallujah and Ramadi. About 2,000 soldiers from 1st Marine Expeditionary
Force were engaged in house-to-house fighting.
-
- In Ramadi, where 12 American marines were killed on Tuesday,
mosques broadcast calls for a holy war against the troops.
-
- Operation Vigilant Resolve, the offensive against gunmen
responsible for daily attacks on US forces, has now claimed at least 150
Iraqi lives. More than 30 American soldiers have been killed on the two
fronts since the weekend.
-
- The attack on the mosque was launched by a jet fighter
and a helicopter gunship. They struck the compound after worshippers had
gathered for afternoon prayers.
-
- The Americans said that gunmen in the mosque had destroyed
a Humvee vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade, wounding five marines.
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- Lt-Col Brennan Byrne, the commander of 1st Bn 5th Marine
Regiment, said his men had now pressed into the centre of Fallujah.
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- The 250,000 people of the city are running short of food.
A local doctor said that 16 children and eight women had been killed in
an air strike on houses on Tuesday.
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- A huge area of western Iraq has been sealed off, with
the highway linking Baghdad with the Jordanian capital, Amman, closed to
all traffic.
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- An American helicopter was shot down in Baquba, 20 miles
north-east of Baghdad, and a British civilian contractor, Gary Teeley,
was kidnapped in the southern town of Nasiriyah.
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