Iraqi town devastated as US troops respond to ambushes

THE Iraqi town of Samarra was partly devastated after US troops yesterday responded to two ambushes.

Local officials said eight civilians were killed and dozens more wounded by US fire.

Elsewhere in Iraq, an American soldier died of wounds he sustained when Iraqi gunmen attacked an army convoy yesterday near Habbaniyah, west of Baghdad.

US forces say they killed 46 insurgents in Sunday's showdown in Samarra.

Yesterday's clashes came after insurgents attacked convoys delivering new Iraqi currency to two local banks.

A US Army spokesman said the insurgent force had been split into two groups of "anything from 30 to 40 individuals at each bank site".

Samarra's police chief, Colonel Ismail Mahmud Muhammad, said the guerrillas who attacked the US forces, wounding five soldiers and a civilian according to a US toll, had withdrawn by the time the Americans returned fire. He claimed that the US troops had fired indiscriminately using all the weapons in their arsenal.

Anguished residents, including middle-aged men, could be seen hugging each other in grief after the carnage on the streets, which tribal leaders warned would only increase support for Washington's foes in the mainly Sunni Muslim town.

Graffiti expressing support for the ousted Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein covered the walls of the city after the prolonged bombardments.

Two Iranians making the pilgrimage to the city's Al-Askariya shrine, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest, were killed when their bus came under fire just 30 metres (yards) from the main hospital, police said. Another nine were wounded.

Samarra hospital anaesthetist Bassem Ibrahim said: "We received the bodies of eight civilians, including a woman and a child". Hospital director Abed Tawfiq told AFP that "more than 60 people wounded by gunfire and shrapnel from US rounds are being treated at the hospital".

Colonel Muhammad said around 20 of the wounded had been injured while worshipping at a mosque during sunset prayers. The impact of a rocket could be seen on one of the outer walls of the Al-Shafii mosque. Its windows had been shattered by the blast.

Ali Abdullah Amin, 12, who was being treated at the hospital for shrapnel wounds to the stomach and leg sustained at the mosque, told AFP his father had been killed and his five-year-old brother slightly injured in the firing.

At the hospital, Fleikh Hassan mourned his 22-year-old son Sabah. Two other sons Rashid, 18, and Fares, 32 were both in comas. "We were in the garden, it was 4pm and a shell landed in our garden," he said.

There were also civilian casualties at the State Enterprise for Drugs Industries and Medical Appliances.

"A company bus that ferries employees to and from work was hit by a US rocket just outside the factory gates," said the firm's administrative affairs director, Hassan Yassin, 54. "A woman who was sitting just behind the driver was killed when the rocket came through the side window."

US commanders said they have met with the head of Samarra's city council and were working hard "to inform the people of Samarra as to what happened".

But Sheikh Qahtan Hajj Salem of the town's tribal council warned that the violence of the response would backfire against US troops. "It is the first time that the town has been attacked with such violence," he said. "The US reponse to this attack can only strengthen the resistance."

Sheikh Salem added that the tribal council had decided to ask the Americans to "leave the town, to pull out completely from the built-up area".