BAGHDAD, 2 April 2004 — The chief US administrator in Iraq yesterday vowed to avenge Wednesday’s gruesome killings and mutilation of four American contract workers even as a roadside bomb injured three American troops in a US military convoy near Fallujah.
Police retrieved the remains of the four slain Americans, wrapped them in blankets, and gave them to US forces, said Iraqi police officer Lt. Salah Abdullah. “We were shocked because our Islamic beliefs reject such behavior,” he said referring to the abuse of the bodies.
Iraq’s US Governor Paul Bremer vowed to hunt down those responsible for ambushing the contractors and those who then torched the corpses and dragged them through the streets before hanging them from a bridge.
“Yesterday’s events in Fallujah are a dramatic example of the ongoing struggle between human dignity and barbarism,” Bremer said in a terse address at a police graduation ceremony.
“The acts we have seen were despicable and inexcusable. They violate the tenets of all religions, Islam included, as well as the foundations of civilized society. Their deaths will not go unpunished.”
“We will pacify that city,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. “We will be back in Fallujah. It will be at the time and place of our choosing.”
Iraqi police manned roadside checkpoints in and around Fallujah, but no US troops could be seen inside. Shops and schools were open.
“We will not let any foreigner enter Fallujah,” said resident Sameer Sami. “Yesterday’s attack is proof of how much we hate the Americans.”
In Ramadi, west of Fallujah, six Iraqi civilians died and four were wounded Wednesday evening in a car bombing at a market, said Lt. Col. Steve Murray, a coalition spokesman. “The Iraqi police had not determined whether it was detonated by remote control or whether it was a suicide bomber within the car,” Murray said.
Also yesterday, two explosions near a US-escorted fuel convoy in northern Baghdad wounded at least one Iraqi. APTN footage showed US soldiers putting a wounded person on a stretcher inside an armored vehicle.
In the north, three US soldiers were wounded in rocket attacks on their base at the Kirkuk airport west of the city. Maj. Hols Houser of the 2nd Airborne Division said “three soldiers were wounded” in a Katyusha rocket attack at 1 a.m. At a checkpoint near the city, gunmen abducted an Iraqi policeman and shot and wounded a colleague. “It’s the first time that a policeman has been abducted in Kirkuk,” Maj. Gen. Anwan Amin, head of the paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in Kirkuk, said.
The Fallujah violence sparked renewed concern among foreign organizations operating in Iraq. Organizers of the Baghdad Expo that was due to start on Monday, said it was postponed — a blow to US efforts to draw investment to Iraq and project an image of a stable country conducive to doing business.
