Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 8 March 2004 — In possibly the single most bloody day of fighting in Iraq since the invasion of the country last year, US Marines fired a rocket and dropped a 500-pound, laser-guided bomb on a mosque compound yesterday in Fallujah, killing at least 40 people according to witnesses. In the face of this latest outrage, the coalition forces battled on two fronts to crush a deadly insurgency that threatens to hurl the country into deeper chaos.

The American attack in Fallujah was in response to a Marine vehicle that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the mosque, wounding five Marines, according to Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne.

After the American truck was hit, a large US force converged on the mosque and Marines waged a six-hour battle around it, with the guerrillas holed up inside, before a Cobra helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at the base of its minaret, and an F-16 dropped the bomb. Cars ferried the dead and wounded from the Abdul-Aziz Al-Samarrai Mosque. Witnesses said part of a wall surrounding the mosque compound was destroyed but the main building was not damaged.

Witnesses said the strike came as worshipers had gathered for afternoon prayers.

Meanwhile, Shiite-inspired violence has spread to key cities in Iraq. It was the third day of a battle to pacify the city of Fallujah.

The fighting in Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi has killed at least 150 Iraqis and 15 US Marines since Monday and was part of an intensified uprising involving both Sunnis and Shiites that now stretched from Kirkuk in the north to the far south.

In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told CNN that from photos of the mosque he had seen, “the actual mosque structure itself” was not damaged. “It is a holy place, there is no doubt about it,” Kimmitt added. “It has a special status under the Geneva Convention that it can’t be attacked.

“However, it can be attacked when there is a military necessity brought on by the fact that the enemy is storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence and executing violence from its grounds,” he said.

Temporary hospitals were set up in private homes to treat the wounded and prepare the dead for burial. There was no immediate confirmation of the number of dead.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US forces launched the operation in Fallujah to capture insurgents involved in attacks on Americans, including the ones who mutilated and burned the bodies of four Americans ambushed last week. He said the troops had pictures and names of those involved and were not attacking the town as a whole.

But guerrillas, who have wide support among the population, dug in and fiercely resisted the US raids into the city center and attacked American troops encircling the city of 200,000. The intensity of the resistance apparently prompted US forces to bring in heavy weapons such as helicopters, tanks and AC130 gunships that have pounded suspected militant sites in the densely populated neighborhoods.

Since Sunday, more than 190 Iraqis, 32 Americans, and two other coalition soldiers have been killed in fighting across the country. The Iraqi figure did not include those killed at the mosque.

Kimmitt vowed to “destroy” the militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, which has been instigating the wave of attacks and street fighting with coalition troops in southern cities and Baghdad this week.

Sadr said Iraq will become “another Vietnam” for the United States unless it transfers power to Iraqis who are not connected with the US-led occupation authority.

“I call upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army, to help them in the transfer of power to honest Iraqis,” Sadr said in a statement issued from his office in the southern city of Najaf. “Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers.”

Sadr’s Mahdi Army launched heavy gunbattles with coalition forces in the streets of three southern cities yesterday and, for the first time, in the north. Sadr fighters battled American troops in the town of Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, hitting a US helicopter with small arms fire. The OH-58 Kiowa chopper was damaged and forced to land, but the two crew members were unharmed.

— Additional input from agencies