U.S. tanks pacing Falluja city

By Aws al-Sharqi, IOL Iraq Correspondent

BAGHDAD, May 28 (IslamOnline.net) – Increasing provocations by American forces of Iraqi citizens has given momentum to resistance in the city of Falluja, 50km south of Baghdad, where Iraqi fighters dealt severe blows to the occupying forces over the past few days.

On Tuesday, May 27, two U.S. soldiers were killed and nine others injured when an armed group of unknown size attacked an American army unit in Falluja.

An American helicopter trying to evacuate the wounded was also shot down during the firefighting.

This came a day after four U.S. soldiers were killed and six others wounded amid a flare-up of resistance activity across occupied Iraq.

While American forces claimed killing two of the Iraqi fighters and detained six others, eyewitnesses told IslamOnline.net correspondent “the fighters had fled and the Americans were unable to hunt them.

“(American) reports about killing a number of them and arresting others were, in fact, related to people American forces detain at checkpoints,” said the eyewitnesses who declined to put their names.

“The Americans were provocatively searching civilian cars, paying no respect to the residents of Falluja,” Saqr Abdul Rahman, an eyewitness to Tuesday’s resistance attack, told IOL correspondent.

“At 12:30 p.m. an armed group attacked two U.S. armoured vehicles at a military checkpoint with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), leaving a number of people dead and injured,” he added.

Abdul Rahman said the shootout lasted for hours before a U.S. helicopter flew in to evacuate the wounded and the dead.

“But moments before landing at the battlefield, a fighter, who was hiding nearby, shot down the American helicopter with an anti-armor missile, killing all on board,” the eyewitness told IOL.

“Shortly afterwards, U.S. Apache helicopters, tanks and many armored vehicles were pacing the entire city up and down in a provocative way, and U.S. troops searched up to 10 houses near the scene of the incident,” he stressed.

Raheem al-Delemi, another eyewitness, told IOL correspondent that the U.S. troops were detaining a number of Iraqi citizens and killed all of them in cold blood in retaliation for the resistance operation.

“They left them lying on the ground till morning, denying ambulances or any one to remove the bodies,” Delemi said.

‘Not From The Moon’

An Iraqi young man points to a bullet hole from Tuesday’s battle

A third eyewitness, who requested anonymity, told IOL that the people of Falluja know one another, but none of them would reveal the identity of the heroic fighters who carried out the operation.

“They are our sons…They are not from the Moon. Do the Americans expect us to stab them in their back?” He averred.

“The resistance goes rolling with a few number,” he continued, “but will gain momentum as days go by.

“It will get harder and harder until they (U.S. troops) give us our right of self-determination,” the eyewitness asserted to IOL correspondent.

“We are not juveniles to be steered by the Americans. They promised us to achieve a lot of things, but have not honored their pledges.

“And the more the Iraqis find out that the Americans were fooling them, the harder the resistance would be,” he said.

The eyewitness asserted that “Iraqis do not accept occupation and remained patients after the toppling of the hated Iraqi regime by the U.S. troops.

“But it does not justify (for the Americans) occupying our land. We do not mind cooperation but cannot accept the U.S. trusteeship,” he underlined.

Jubilation

The residents of Falluja were jubilant at the new resistance attack, as if they were telling the rest of the Iraqi people: “we started it and now we expect you to take the torch of resistance.”

Many of them expected the Tuesday’s operation to be “just the beginning of wide-scale operations,” in Falluja.

Following the attacks, the U.S. troops have become extremely cautious and stopped joking with children as the used to do before, fearing another resistance operation.

The U.S. media, in effect, does everything possible to play down such resistance operations, while American troops always rush to evacuate the wounded and the dead to paper over their losses.