By Mohamed Forati, IOL Correspondent

TUNISIA, April 19 (IslamOnline.net) - After three tough weeks in Iraq, Tunisian volunteers who fought against the U.S.-led invasion forces returned home with haunting memories and bitter feeling of betrayal and hatred.

"We left for Iraq as volunteers to join the Iraqis who are die-set to defend their country, but returned victims to betrayal by some Iraqi army members and hatred - and even attacks - by some Iraqi civilians," recalled Al-Tayeb Bin Othman, a 27-year-old teacher.

"Upon reaching Baghdad, we stayed for four days without any sort of military training and were later given Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades after lightning training," Othman told IslamOnline.net.

But since the first days of war, unleashed on March 20, Othman's group of volunteers was deserted by their Iraqi commander who suddenly vanished in thin air.

"Amid the conflicting showdown, the governor of the eastern town of al-Kut called on the Arab volunteers to counter the attack by the U.S. forces in the absence of Iraqi army units," he recalled.

"The battle was so ferocious and we lost 26 martyrs, all Arab volunteers," asserted Othman.

He said that the Iraqi regular forces pulled out of the area in large and organized numbers and donned civilian clothes.

"This left the situation on the ground as intense," he bitterly remembered.

Talk about betrayal by some Iraqi army members were also rumored among the thick palls of smoke that turned reality of the situation there as blurry.

"Arab volunteers were put in the frontlines while the Republican Guard units were in the back in the battle around Baghdad’s Saddam International airport," said Al-Assad Jirad in disgruntle, adding 400 Arab volunteers breathed their last during the fighting.

We were stun-founded when a Yemeni was about to "fire on a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship only to be ordered by an Iraqi officer 'Do not shoot… it is an Iraqi aircraft', he recalled.

To add up to the plight of people leaving their country for the defense of another, the inhabitants of southern town of Nassiriyah welcomed Arab volunteers with nothing but gunfire.

"We were fired at by the town residents, who killed three of us. They just shouted asking us 'why you are here? Did you came to defend Saddam?'" Emad, another volunteer, asserted.

Iraqi nurses remove the bodies of dead Arab volunteers from a mass grave in a public garden in Baghdad

Further to their dismay, Arab volunteers were mostly kept in tunnels for days without ammunitions to face the invading forces or even enough foodstuffs to survive.

"Amid these tough conditions, we were forced to leave back to our counties through Syria," most of volunteers interviewed by IslamOnline.net said.

"But some managed to escape home, others fell in the hands of the U.S. forces," said Selim Gharsallah.

Selim, standing outside the Palestine Hotel 15 minutes before the U.S. marines drove in amid surprisingly scant resistance, found no way out but to hide among human shields after taking off the Khaki suit which he felt would leave him less secure.

"I was nabbed by the invading forces along with western human shields, then escorted by them back to my country through Jordan," he recalled.

Selim was lucky he found a French acquaintance that helped shave and join the human shields.

However, many volunteers are reportedly still inside Iraq, making up some of the most determined holdouts in the fight against the U.S.-led forces.

In Baghdad on Thursday, April 18, U.S. Marines cleared out two mosques after determining that fighters from other Arab countries were inside.

Days before the breakout of war, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan announced that thousands of Arab volunteers seeking martyrdom were flocking to Iraq in droves.

The Iraqi embassy in Berlin had said before the aggression that "some volunteers" -- Egyptians, Lebanese, Moroccans and Palestinians -- had obtained visas to fight in Iraq, and that some Iraqis had returned home for that purpose.

While it is difficult to confirm these figures, reports have come in from Cairo to Stockholm of Arabs volunteering to join in defending Iraq.

Iraq's state-run television later said an estimated 4,000 fighters had arrived in the country.

The withdrawal of the Iraqi army from towns and barracks a mystry not only to Arab volunteers but also to many people world-wide.

Some volunteers stood witness to such pull-outs in Mosul while they were heading for the Syrian borders.