BAGHDAD, August 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Four masked men identifying themselves as Iraqi resistance group warned Sunday, August 10, of more anti-U.S. resistance operations in Iraq, while denying any link with Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.

"This increasing resistance has no link with what remains of the former regime," said one of the four men pictured in a videotape broadcast by Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite news channel.

"Because they have neither values nor principles, the ousted regime are not capable of taking part in anti-U.S. resistance and could not sacrifice their sons and wives; otherwise Baghdad would not have fallen with such easiness," he added.

"We are members of the Iraqi resistance. We will fight the occupier to defend our religion, our faith, our homeland and our people,” said the spokesman, cradling a Kalashnikov assault rifle, while his three companions wielded two more AK-47s and two rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

"Resistance has become an insurmountable hurdle" for the U.S. forces of occupation, the spokesman said, warning: "We will turn Iraq into a cemetery for the invaders and colonizers."

The group, which dated the tape on August 3, also took aim at the U.S. military for trying to blame the almost daily attacks on its soldiers on loyalists to the former regime.

"As it had launched a dirty war against Iraq under the pretext of ending the corruption of the former regime, America is trying to crack down on resistance by linking us to the same former regime," said the voice.

"Iraqi resistance is legal and justified by all international laws and resolutions. How come that we should not resist as thousands of Iraqis are being detained, our land occupied and our honor violated" he said.

The group also boasted that resistance has become "a huge obstacle" in the way of the U.S. occupation forces, and even cited a report by the Department of State admitting situation in Iraq has slipped out of control.

"We swear to make Iraq a tomb for those villains," he concluded.

Observers see the tape as a fresh evidence that Iraqi resistance - that left more than 60 U.S. soldiers dead since the end of the offensive - is more organized with no ties to the Saddam regime.

"The well-written statement - read with no group named - demonstrates that Iraqi resistance has become more unified, speaking in one voice and not being attributed to no specific party," said political analyst Zafer Elani.

El-Ani told Al-Jazeera that the statement carried viewpoints of many Iraqis, "who blame the former regime for the current occupation".

Abdel-Qader Mohamed Fahmi, a political science professor in Baghdad University, considered it a proof that "the growing anti-American sentiments is spreading among all sections of the war-inflicted society in Iraq".

"The resentment is not limited to one group of people. Many are suffering from lack of security, bad treatment and making no good on earlier promises" of a better future made by Washington, Fahmi told Al-Jazeera.

The tape came as American occupation forces have come under a plethora of attacks across the country on Sunday, leaving at least five soldiers wounded and several military vehicles destroyed, following the detention of three Iraqis overnight.

Thursday's attack on the embassy, which killed 14 people and wounded more than 50, was "an act of sabotage carried out by spies and traitors to undermine the resistance to the occupation," said one of at least five gunmen appearing on the video.

"We have inflicted huge losses on the enemy" in the Baghdad districts of Al-Rashid and Karrada, said the gunmen's statement, which conceded the "loss of two martyrs from among our Arab brethren" in another battle.

"Guerrilla warfare is the only way of liberating the homeland," the group said.

They chided "turbaned" men, a reference to Muslim, particularly Shiite scholars, for failing to declare "jihad," or holy war, against occupation forces.

"What are the men with white and black turbans waiting for to declare jihad? They (U.S. forces) have killed children, young men, elderly men and women," said a gunman reading the statement which he said was dated August 9.