BAGHDAD, 4 April 2004 — In the latest assault on Iraq’s US-trained security forces, gunmen killed four people in two separate attacks on police south of Baghdad yesterday.
A senior US official, meanwhile, said investigators were studying videotape of Iraqis mutilating the bodies of four American contract workers killed Wednesday in Fallujah, trying to identify participants.
The charred remains of the Americans were dragged through the streets for hours after insurgents ambushed their vehicles. Two corpses were hung from a bridge.
There was no sign of any US military activity in the Fallujah area to suggest retaliatory action was imminent. US administrator Paul Bremer has said those who killed the four civilians and burned their bodies “will not go unpunished.”
In the first attack on police yesterday, the department chief of Mahmoudiya, 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of Baghdad, was driving from the capital to his home when gunmen killed him and his driver, police Lt. Ala’a Hussein said.
Not long afterward, six attackers shot at a four-man police patrol in Mahmoudiya, killing one and wounding three, police officer Khaldoon Al-Gurairi said. A 60-year-old bystander was also killed. Also yesterday, an explosion near a US military convoy near Khalis, 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, wounded a civilian and damaged a Humvee, Iraqi officials said. It was not clear if Americans were hurt.
In western Baghdad yesterday, a rocket slammed into a house in a residential suburb, killing two people and wounding four, said Jamil Ibrahim, a doctor at Yarmouk hospital.
Guerrillas often target police because they view them as collaborators with the US-led occupation. Also they make easier targets because they are less well-armed and protected than the US troops.