Iraqis shout anti-U.S. slogans in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, June 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A U.S. soldier was killed and another injured by an Iraqi sniper’s fire in western Baghdad Tuesday, June 3, according to al-Jazeera.

The attack in the town of al-Ramadi came in response to killing two civilians and injuring others, including children, when U.S. soldiers opened fire on anti-U.S. demonstrators outside the governorate’s office in the town.

Angry over the U.S. military presence two months after the invasion with no tangible steps to return situation back to normal, the demonstrators held up pictures of former President Saddam Hussein and shouted slogans to support him.

The U.S. forces used random fire and tear gas to disperse the jeering protestors, al-Jazeera reported.

Eyewitnesses in the Iraqi capital have told IslamOnline.net earlier last week that a sniper killed five American soldiers within earlier few days, each with one bullet in the neck or the right eye, creating panic among the occupation forces here.

Iraqis snubbed a U.S. military call to hand over their weapons, considering the move an attempt to stop resistance attacks and growing effective calls for end of occupation of the oil-rich country.

Top U.S. commander in Iraq David Mckiernan Thursday denied that the flare-up of hit-and-run attacks against U.S. occupation forces in recent days marked a new nationalist resistance to the seven-week-old occupation. The spate of attacks last month left 22 U.S. soldiers dead.

"I don't think that there is a new movement in Iraq that is anti-coalition," he said.

"I see it being orchestrated by enemies whose future has gone. They were part of Saddam Hussein's regime, they were tied to him ... They and the Iraqi people know that they have no future."

The U.S. commander said he was mulling sending extra troops to western Iraq to tackle what he described as a continuing "war" against "regime holdouts".

But he could not comment on why U.S. soldiers had been targeted in the Sunni Muslim towns of Fallujah, Ramadi and Hit, rather than the Shiite south.

In Falluja, two U.S. soldiers have been killed and others injured in attacks by gunmen, as anti-American sentiments are boiling since the U.S. forces killed more that 19 protestors calling for an end to occupation.

The U.S. military said last week that its soldiers shot dead an Iraqi woman, the U.S. military said she was carrying two hand grenades in Baqubah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Baghdad.

Bearing the brunt of the poor security situation and the slow pace of improvement, Iraqis wondered why the U.S. occupation forces did not take any action to halt chaos, anarchy and lawlessness in the country after they rolled into.

A U.S. official said on Monday a council is to be installed in Iraq within six weeks, whose members will be selected by the U.S. administration, instead of holding a national conference to set up an interim government for the country.

On Monday, thousands of sacked Iraqi soldiers swarmed angrily around U.S. administration headquarters in Baghdad, to protest U.S. administrator Paul Bremer’s decision to dissolve Saddam's armed forces, several security bodies and the defense and information ministries last month, firing 400,000 people.

Many protesters complained they could no longer feed their families, and they should not be punished for the former regime’s mistakes.