April 07, 2004
Falluja update
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In Falluja, we continue to righteously avenge the deaths of those poor mercenaries...
Fierce street battles continued to rage in Falluja with resistance fighters putting up stiff opposition to US occupation forces trying to gain control of the restive town.Posted by Norwood at April 7, 2004 11:51 PMHospital sources said at least 45 Iraqis were killed and 90 injured in attacks on the besieged town on Wednesday.
Among the casualties were a family sitting in a car parked behind the Abd al-Aziz al-Samarai mosque when it was bombed by a US airplane.
Another 53 Iraqis died in attacks overnight Tuesday on the town which was sealed off on Sunday by US forces. Twenty-five of those killed were from a single family.
"More than 200 Iraqis, including women and children, have been injured in the past 24 hours," said Aljazeera correspondent in Falluja, Ahmad Mansur.
American forces initially said those killed in Wednesday's attack on the mosque were fighters taking refuge.
But a marine officer was later forced to admit that US forces had failed to find any bodies.
"When we hit that building I thought we had killed all the bad guys, but when we went in they didn't find any bad guys in the building," Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne told reporters.
Instead, he speculated the insurgents may have fled after a Cobra helicopter gunship fired a Hellfire missile at the mosque, and before an aircraft dropped a laser-guided bomb.
Mosque damaged
The bomb hit the minaret of the mosque and ploughed a hole through the building, shattering windows and leaving the mosque badly damaged.
