US Troops Kill Iraqi Officers as Resistance Continues

12/09/2003| IslamWeb

U.S. soldiers opened fire Friday on Iraqi police officers chasing highway bandits near an 'American' checkpoint in a small town west of Fallujah, witnesses said. Fallujah police were chasing a white BMW without license plates that they identified as one used by highway bandits on the road connecting Baghdad with the Jordanian border. The officers chasing the four men in the BMW were in pickup trucks. U.S. Army troops manning a checkpoint on a road leading to the resort village of Saddamiyat al-Falluja, opened fire on the BMW and the trucks when they did not stop. Witnesses initially said 11 police officers and all four men in the car were killed in the hail of fire. After the shooting, which was near the Jordanian Hospital just outside Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, 12 policemen were taken inside the nearby U.S. base. Whether they were killed or injured was not clear. Arab satellite television broadcasters were reporting between 10 and 17 policemen killed. Also, US forces surrounded a house in al-Ta'meem, Ramadi in the belief it contained armed resistance fighters. Two of the suspects were gunned down and the third was injured and arrested. The US soldiers also suffered casualties, according to Aljazeera's correspondent. He said a number of others were arrested nearby when US forces surrounded another house. No one was injured in the latter incident. In Abu Ghuraib, resistance fighters carried out two attacks which killed a number of US soldiers and injured several others early on Friday. However, reports of American deaths were being denied on Friday afternoon by a US military spokeswoman based in Iraq. She would only confirm that two soldiers had been injured in the crossfire. AlJazeera correspondent quoting eyewitnesses, said in one attack, the fighters fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at a US Humvee vehicle in the al-Souq al-Sha'bi area at 4am (GMT 1am). Several US soldiers were killed and other injured, the correspondent said. **PHOTO CAPTION*** A burning truck is seen in this image from television after a US army convoy was attacked in Khaldia, 30 km west of Fallujah, Iraq Thursday Sept 11 2003. (AP Photo/APTN)