FALLUJA, Sept 27: Iraqi police said on Saturday that US forces shot dead four Iraqis on a road just outside the volatile town of Falluja and angry residents vowed to avenge the killings.
US forces said they were shot at first and that two Iraqis were killed when they returned fire in the incident at a checkpoint late on Friday.
But Iraqi police officer Ibrahim Mohammed told Reuters three men and one woman from the same family were killed.
Television footage showed four bodies in a nearby hospital and several wounded including a small girl.
Chanting “America is the enemy of God” and “We will avenge the blood of our martyrs” hundreds of mourners gathered at the hospital on Saturday to take the first of the bodies for burial.
Many in the crowd fired AK-47 rifles into the air as a wooden coffin was carried through the streets to the town’s cemetery.
“This evening we received a number of injured and martyrs as a result of an attack by the American forces,” a doctor at the hospital, Firas Abdul Hussein, said.
Falluja is about 50kms west of Baghdad, in the Sunni area where resistance to the US occupation is strongest and American forces often come under attack.
HOTEL ATTACKED: Meanwhile, a landmark hotel housing US officials here came under mortar or rocket fire on Saturday, the latest attack in a spreading pattern of violence sparked by the American-led occupation of Iraq, officials said.
The attack caused minor damage near the top of the Rashid Hotel and no casualties. But it came amid a spurt of bloodshed that has rattled UN workers and foreign journalists, and taken a mounting toll among Iraqi civilians.
US military officials said three or four mortars or rockets were fired about 6:40am (0740 PST) at the 14-storey Rashid Hotel, a major symbol of the US occupation heavily guarded by troops, sandbags and barbed wire.
“It did strike the Rashid Hotel around the 14th floor, but it was minor, very superficial damage,” said Charles Heatley, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) which runs Iraq.
The attack came two days after a small bomb at a hotel housing the Baghdad offices of the US television network NBC killed a maintenance man in the first such assault aimed at foreign journalists here.
Asked if the military planned to tighten its guard around the Rashid, Heatley said, “Security is constantly under review and we will continue to do that.”
The Rashid Hotel, built in 1983, used to house most of the foreign press, diplomats and many visiting Western businessmen before US-led forces invaded the country in March to oust Saddam Hussein.
A mosaic of former US president George Bush, who led the campaign that chased Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991, used to adorn the floor at the entrance, bearing the legend “The Criminal.”
The picture is gone and the hotel has become a fortress for officials of the occupying coalition. It stands next to the Baghdad convention center, where the military press offices are located.
Although it did little damage, the attack on the Rashid highlighted how resistance to the occupation of Iraq has spread from assaults on military forces to attacks on civilian officials and other foreigners.
MORE US TROOPS: The United States on Saturday activated 10,000 National Guard troops for service in Iraq and put another 5,000 on alert for likely call-up after its appeal for foreign military help met no immediate response.
They will undergo about three months of training before going to Iraq early next year for a full year.
The army also put the 5,000-strong 81st National Guard Brigade from Washington State on notice for a likely call to active duty in Iraq.
The call-up of the part-time solders from North Carolina and Arkansas for duty in Iraq — where the United States already has 130,000 troops — was expected because they had earlier been alerted for probable duty.—Reuters/AFP