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| Friday, 9 April 2004 |
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US warns mosques will become targets if used by insurgents WASHINGTON, Thursday (AFP) The US military defended the use of precision guided bombs against a mosque compound in the flashpoint city of Fallujah and warned that Iraqi mosques could be targeted again if insurgents use them. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US military officials said US Marines taking part in Operation Vigilant Resolve in the city west of Baghdad were moving steadily into Fallujah and had detained suspects in connection with last week's brutal killing of four US security contractors. US forces fired a missile from the air and at least one precision guided bomb at the Abdulaziz al-Samarai mosque where Iraqi insurgents were believed to have been holed up. The US Central Command said the attacks on the mosque were ordered after gunfire from the mosque compound left five "casualties" among US marines. About 40 insurgents were originally believed killed in the attack on the compound. But a senior US officer in Fallujah, Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne, later admitted that no bodies or signs of injuries had been found. All the city mosques called for a "jihad" (holy war) against occupation forces amid intense bombardments and aircraft overflights, an AFP correspondent in the city said. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the US military's deputy director of operations in Iraq, told CNN television from Baghdad that Iraqi mosques will be targeted if they are used as bases for attacks or for weapons storage. Kimmitt said US forces had dropped two 500-pound (227-kilo) precision-guided bombs on the Fallujah mosque compound because insurgents were using it as cover to fire at US soldiers. "It (a mosque) has a special status under the Geneva Convention that it can't be attacked," Kimmitt said. "However, it can be attacked when there is a military necessity." He said religious sites would be struck if US forces believed insurgents were "storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence, (or) executing violence from its grounds." Meanwhile There was no sign of an easing in the fighting that has raged around several Iraqi cities since Sunday, leaving more 200 Iraqis dead, as well as 15 Americans, including 12 killed in a single incident in Ramadi, west of here. Hundreds of Iraqis have been wounded since Sunday when radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's militiamen unleashed protests and US forces started an offensive in the restive Sunni town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Faced with the escalating violence, Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for a peaceful settlement to the country's problems to avoid further chaos and bloodshed. |
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