Naseer Al-Nahr • Asharq Al-Awsat

FALLUJA, Iraq, 2 July 2003 — Thousands of Iraqis chanted anti-American slogans yesterday as they buried victims of an overnight blast that damaged a mosque — despite US insistence that its forces had nothing to do with the explosion. Local people in the already restive town of Falluja, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim anti-US sentiment since the fall of Saddam Hussein, said the blast killed eight people, including clerics, and was the result of an American air attack. Some swore revenge against Americans.

But the commander of US forces in the town, 50 km west of Baghdad, flatly denied the accusation. “There was no US warplane involved. There was no artillery from US troops. It was simply an explosion inside a building adjacent to the mosque,” Col. Joseph Disalvo said.

Mourners marched from the damaged mosque to bury five of the dead, firing automatic rifles in the air and waving Iraqi flags. “America is the enemy of God!” they chanted. “Avenge the killings!” Residents said the blast late on Monday had destroyed the room of the imam, the prayer leader, in the mosque compound as well as damaging the mosque itself. They said religious scholars had been attending lessons.

Four US soldiers were also reportedly killed in Baghdad yesterday, with attacks on coalition forces showing no sign of letting up and as a series of unexplained blasts overnight left six Iraqis dead. But the Pentagon said it was unaware of any fatal attacks on US troops in Iraq yesterday, reporting instead that six US soldiers were injured in two separate bombing attacks.