Three Iraqi Civilians Killed in Violence

Amid burst of gunfire and prayer, Iraqi rioters waving portraits of Saddam Hussein battled U.S. troops and tanks on Friday, when a dispute over a marketplace outside Baghdad exploded into anti-American fury. Two Iraqis were killed, and 17 others and two U.S. soldiers were reported wounded.

Farther west in Fallujah, a center of the anti-U.S. resistance, an explosion and fire struck the office of the mayor, who has cooperated with the U.S. occupation. In a melee that followed, one Iraqi was killed, and later Friday U.S. troops came under attack at the same spot.

An Islamic clergymen’s association, meanwhile, issued a statement for Friday prayer congregations denouncing as sinful any Muslim’s support for the Americans. “Supporting them is apostasy,” it said, ” … a betrayal of religion.”

Rumors spread through Baghdad that bombings or other resistance action would strike the capital on Saturday. A street leaflet attributed to the ousted Baathists declared it would be “the day of establishing the Iraqi resistance,” and also called for a three-day general strike to begin Saturday.

As a result, U.S. officials urged Americans in the Iraqi capital to “maintain a high level of vigilance.”

The fresh violence flared as U.S. forces contended with an upsurge in the six-month-old campaign of ambushes and bombings by the shadowy resistance forces, who now strike almost three dozen times a day, mostly in central Iraq. In one typical attack, a bomb exploded Friday morning near an 82nd Airborne Division patrol outside Khaldiyah, west of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding four others, the U.S. military reported.

The U.S. command is grappling with unanswered questions of who is behind the harassing attacks, how coordinated they are, and how to bring them under control. American officials variously blame diehard Saddam loyalists, foreign and local Islamic extremists, and even released criminals, and some suggest the fugitive ex-president may be plotting some attacks.

Before dawn on Friday, U.S. troops sealed off Saddam’s birthplace village of Uja, 95 miles north of Baghdad, where relatives and Baath Party adherents have long been suspected of maintaining contacts with the ousted leader.

The 4th Infantry Division troops ringed the village with razor wire, set up exit checkpoints, and began issuing identity cards to villagers in order to control their movements.

The bloody, on-and-off clashes here in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, broke out Friday morning when U.S. troops tried to clear market stalls from a main road, Iraqi police reported.

The reason for the U.S. action and the sequence of events remained unclear late Friday. But at some early point someone tossed a grenade at U.S. soldiers, slightly wounding two, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Joseph Harrison said at the scene, and mortar rounds fell on a nearby police station.

Young Iraqis threw stones at soldiers and tanks, set tires ablaze, and brandished Saddam portraits, shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” – “God is great!”

Gunfire erupted sporadically, but then the Iraqis retired for midday prayers in nearby mosques. When they returned to the market, gunfire erupted again as more U.S. armored vehicles moved in. Ten explosions and machine-gun fire were heard, and American helicopters hovered overhead.

In late afternoon, the bodies of two Iraqi men – identified by friends as Mohammed Auweid, 45, and Hamid Abdullah, 41 – were carried from the sealed-off area.

“God damn America!” shouted friend Ali Hussein, who said the men were passing by when the Americans opened fire indiscriminately on rock-throwers. “U.S. soldiers are the real terrorists, not us!” he said.

Nearby Shula Hospital received 17 wounded civilians, Dr. Imad Ali said. He said three were in critical condition. The Americans said they arrested two Iraqis in the area found carrying a mortar firing tube.

Some 40 miles to the west, an explosion rocked the center of the city at midday, and thick black smoke billowed from the mayor’s office. The town hall had been the target of previous attacks as well, since its leadership began cooperating with the American military last April.

Firemen extinguished the flames, and no casualties were immediately reported, but authorities said one Iraqi was killed and one wounded when nearby residents converged on the scene outraged that their district was again the target of an attack because it was associated with the U.S. occupation. Police shot the man dead during the argument, said civil defense officer Ahmed Khalil.

American armored vehicles, which have been withdrawing from central Fallujah on Fridays, the Muslim day of prayer, returned to set up positions after the incident. Late Friday, unknown attackers hit them with an estimated 10 rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, witnesses said. There was no immediate information on any casualties.

Elsewhere, the Sunni Muslim clerics’ group, the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, issued a statement that could be read to worshippers across Iraq declaring, “Beware of supporting the occupiers and know that contacting them, without a legitimate necessity, is sinful.”

The association is one of several Iraqi clerical groups formed after the U.S.-British invasion force toppled Saddam’s regime last April, and its leaders have taken a stand against the U.S. occupation. Saddam’s Baath Party found its greatest support in Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland.

In Ramadi, a statement signed by the Islamic Jihad Resistance was posted inside the city’s New Mosque calling people not to go outside Saturday and Sunday. “The resistance will carry out new operations,” the statement said.