US hits rebels after church bombings

FALLUJAH - United States forces battled rebels in Iraq's militant stronghold of Fallujah last night as American tanks, armoured personnel carriers and Humvee vehicles gathered on a highway on its outskirts.

Witnesses said US tanks pounded insurgent positions on the eastern edge of the city, where loud explosions could be heard and plumes of smoke were rising.

Rebels fired back with mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades, the witnesses said. It was not clear if anyone was hurt.

Iraq's US-backed interim government has warned that it will launch a major offensive in Fallujah if the city does not hand over Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers.

Fallujah representatives and some Iraqi insurgents in the city say they have seen no evidence that Zarqawi is holed up there.

Earlier explosions hit five churches in Baghdad, and two US Army helicopters crashed elsewhere in the capital, killing two American soldiers and wounding two others, as violence flared while Iraqi Muslims began marking the holy month of Ramadan.

The US command said four more American troops and an Iraqi interpreter were killed by car bombs in the west and north of the country.

US jets struck again in Fallujah, blasting what the American command said was a checkpoint operated by the feared Tawhid and Jihad terror movement of Zarqawi. Three people were killed, according to the Fallujah hospital.

Last night residents reported a new round of aerial strikes in the city.

The military action came despite an offer by community leaders in Fallujah to resume peace talks with the Government if US forces stop their attacks on the city and free their chief negotiator.

Fallujah hospital officials also said US artillery shells fell on a house in Halabsa village, 16km southwest of the city, yesterday killing a 3-year-old girl and injuring four family members.

In Baghdad, mortar shells exploded near Ibn al-Betar hospital, killing one employee and wounding three others, and in the parking lot of the Mansour Hotel, which houses the Chinese Embassy and is home to foreign diplomats and journalists. No one was killed in the hotel attack.

The Army OH-58 helicopters went down in southwestern Baghdad, the 1st Cavalry Division said. The division said the cause of the crashes had not been determined.

"There are investigators on the site and they'll go through it till they ascertain the cause of the crash. It could be days," said spokesman Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton.

The US military has lost at least 27 helicopters in Iraq since May 2003, many of them to hostile fire, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution.

Homemade bombs exploded in quick succession before dawn at the five churches in four separate Baghdad neighbourhoods, causing no casualties but further alarming the Christian minority community already on edge over the perceived rise of Islamic militancy following last year's ouster of Saddam Hussein.

In August, co-ordinated attacks hit four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens more in the first significant strike against Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians since the US invasion began last year.

"It is a criminal act to make Iraq unstable and to create religious difficulties," the Rev Zaya Yousef of St George's Church said of the latest attacks. "But this will not happen because we all live together like brothers in this country through sadness and happiness."

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, which were condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group believed to have ties to some insurgents.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq