Residents
in Samarra said they had not seen any of the fighters' bodies, 46 or
54.
Abdelrizek
Jadwa, who owns a grocery 50 meters (yards) from the scene of one of
the attacks, wondered where did the bodies disappear.
"After
the firing, I went out of my shop. There were no wounded, no killed on
the streets. Have they evaporated?"
The
head of the local hospital, Abed Tawfiq, reported eight dead civilians
but no fighters.
And
Dr. Falah Hassan told IslamOnline.net that only seven people,
including an 11-year-old boy, old man and an Iranian woman, were
killed and 54 others injured.
Ambulance
driver Abdelmoneim Mohammed said he had not ferried any combatants
wounded or killed and wearing the black Fedayeen outfit.
"If
I had seen bodies, I would have picked them up. It's not like the
Americans would have done it.
"If
the death toll had reached that announced by the Americans, the
atmosphere in Samarra would be quite different," he said.
Salaheddin
Mawlud, a colonel in the former Iraqi army, who now heads Samarra city
council's complaints office, said the American toll does not work.
"If
there had been so many dead, we would have seen people rushing to the
hospital, the police station or here, and it just didn't happen."
Another
local described as "holy" the Samarra battle, claiming that
Iraqi fighters had killed up to 40 U.S. soldiers and destroyed 14
tanks.
Other
witnesses told IOL that the town's locals knew about U.S. plans to
transfer newly issued Iraqi dinars to Al-Rashid Bank in Samarra and
attacked the escorting convoys, killing all onboard.
Mohammad
Salih, 21, told IOL that only four fighters were killed in the battle.
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Women stand at their bullet-riddled balcony after it was hit by U.S. troops in Samarra (AFP)
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"I
was hiding inside my father's shop at the time and I saw four fighters
riding a black BMW and firing rocket propelled-grenades (RPGs) at the
U.S. convoys, but a U.S. tank hit back at their car and killed
them," he said.
Holy
Places Attacked
Witnesses
further said that U.S. troops opened fire at the gates of the
mausoleum of Ali Al-Hadi, a Shiite authority, and Al-Risala
Al-Muhammadia mosque.
The
occupation troops further fired shells at the town on Sunday night,
wounding 15 worshippers who were about to perform Al-Maghrib prayers.
"As
I was about to say my prayers with other worshippers I heard a
powerful explosion and I fell into a comma to find myself later in the
hospital," Gamal Muntasir, 19, told IOL.
He
said the attack on innocent worshippers came in retaliation for the
grinding battle of Samarra, which inflicted heavy losses on the U.S.
troops.
Confused
Answers
Furthermore,
U.S. commanders tried to dodge questions of reporters, who tried to
figure out mind-boggling mystery of the absence of any fighters'
bodies at Samarra's single hospital or on the city's streets.
"Are
you asking me to produce (them)?" Retorted Colonel Fredrick
Rudesheim, who heads the 3rd Combat Brigades that was involved in
Sunday's clashes.
"This
is a good question and I think perhaps if you can interview the
Fedayeen (a disbanded militia of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime) or
whoever attacked us, you might get a better answer."
Gonsalves,
who commands the 166th Armored Battalion in Samarra, also said his
troops were not in possession of the bodies.
The
death toll, he said, "is based on the reports we got from the
ground."
Lieutenant
Joseph Marcee, who took part in Sunday's combat, alleged he saw
several of the fighters lying dead on the ground.
"There
was no time to pick up the bodies. We were receiving fire from other
locations," he said.
Sergeant
Nicholas Mullen, who fired rounds from an Abrams tank Sunday, offered
yet another explanation for the army's inability to locate the
corpses.
"We
don't stick around," he said.
The
events capped the worst weekend in seven months of occupation which
saw the
deaths of seven Spaniards, two Koreans, two
Japanese, two U.S. soldiers and a Colombian.
Ninety-nine
occupation troops were said to have died in Iraq during November,
according to a BBC count. They included 82 U.S. troops, and 17
Italian soldiers.
