BAGHDAD, 17 March 2004 — Gunmen shot dead two German civilians and two Iraqis south of Baghdad yesterday, police said, bringing to eight the number of Western civilians killed by guerrillas over the past eight days. Police said the civilians were attacked near the town of Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad.
On Monday evening, guerrillas opened fire with AK-47s at a car carrying US civilians in the northern city of Mosul. Three were killed instantly and a fourth died in hospital, the US army said.
Gunmen also killed three Iraqi policemen in Mosul yesterday afternoon in a drive-by shooting, police at the scene said.
Earlier in the day, attackers killed the sister of an Iraqi translator working for the US Army in Mosul and wounded her brother, police said.
Meanwhile, Sunni Muslim cleric Sheikh Thafer Subhi says he is convinced US forces are in Iraq to wage a religious crusade — and a dawn raid on a mosque has only deepened his anger.
Many of the cleric’s followers in the flash point city of Fallujah west of Baghdad share his fierce hatred of the US soldiers who have occupied their overwhelmingly Muslim country, and regard searches of mosques as a particular affront.
“I don’t feel sorry when an infidel raids our mosques,” Subhi told worshipers at Fallujah’s Muhajreen Mosque.
“We await God’s will to obliterate America’s 50 states. Tyranny has a limit and the true power in this universe is God, not America.”
Locals say US troops burst into the imam’s rooms and a women’s prayer room early on Sunday, confiscating computer disks and pulling up carpets to search for weapons.
