Iraqi mob kills and mutilates US civilians

Jubilant Iraqis yanked the bodies of four American contractors from their burning jeeps yesterday, dragged the charred corpses through the streets, and hung two of them from a bridge spanning the Euphrates River.

Elsewhere, five US soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby on one of the bloodiest days this year for the coalition governing Iraq.

The brutal treatment of the four corpses came after they were killed in a rebel attack on their four-wheel-drive vehicles in the Sunni Triangle city of Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad. The US State Department confirmed all four men were American citizens.