Iraqi Mob Kills 4 Americans

A mob of angry Iraqis attacked two vehicles carrying U.S. civilian security workers Wednesday in this anti-American stronghold, killing the four contractors, mutilating their remains and hanging two of the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

In scenes reminiscent of the 1993 attack against U.S. soldiers in Somalia, at least one of the torsos was tied to a car and dragged through the street as scores of adults and children cheered and danced.

The assault came hours after five U.S. soldiers were killed about 12 miles away by a powerful roadside bomb that hit their armored personnel carrier. The bombing brought to 597 the total number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

The brutality of the Fallouja attack -- which came nearly a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime -- underscored the rage many Iraqis feel toward the occupation as well as the continuing challenge faced by the U.S. military in hot spots such as Fallouja.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad rejected comparisons to the Somalia attack, in which images of an American soldier’s mutilated body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu spurred the U.S. to pull its troops out of the African nation.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for coalition forces, said the U.S. would not back down. “In fact, it would be disgracing the deaths of these people if we were to stop our missions,” he said.

U.S. officials said the assailants did not represent the views of most Iraqis.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan called the killing of the U.S. civilians “a despicable attack -- it is a horrific attack.”

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those victims,” he said. “But we will not be intimidated. And the best way to honor those who have lost their lives is to continue to show resolve in the face of these cowardly, hateful acts designed to intimidate and roll back the democratic progress and the freedom for the Iraqi people that we are achieving.”

Wednesday’s attacks culminated one of the bloodiest months since President Bush declared an end to the major combat phase of the war on May 1 and came as occupation officials hurried to prepare to hand over sovereignty to a new Iraqi interim government June 30.

U.S. officials declined to identify the contractors who were killed Wednesday, pending notification of their families.

But Blackwater Security Consulting, based in Moyock, N.C., said the contractors worked for the firm. Blackwater is a security company that has been guarding convoys delivering food in the Fallouja area.

An American passport and a U.S. Defense Department identification card were found near one of the bodies, Associated Press reported. The report could not be independently confirmed. Video footage also showed a Fallouja resident displaying what appeared to be dog tags taken from a body.

Witnesses said the victims were in two sport utility vehicles driving through the center of Fallouja’s commercial district about 9:30 a.m. While stopped at an intersection, they were attacked by a gang of insurgents whose head scarves covered their faces.

After being struck by rocket-propelled grenades, the vehicles caught fire or were set ablaze by the mob, witnesses said.

“One person fell out of the car and was attacked by the crowd,” said a car dealer who watched the attack from his lot. “People were saying they were CIA.”

Cameras captured images of one of the contractors -- dressed in a white shirt and beige pants -- lying face down on the pavement next to the car door in a pool of blood.

As flames and plumes of black smoke shot from the vehicles, scores of Iraqis pulled the charred bodies from the wreckage. They repeatedly struck one of the corpses with a long pole and hacked apart torsos with shovels. Triumphant-looking Iraqis watched, chanting, “Kill the Americans!” and “We sacrifice our blood and souls for Islam!”

“There’s the leg of one of the Americans!” shouted one boy about 8 years old, pointing to a charred limb that had been flung over a telephone wire.

One charred torso was tied with a yellow cord to the back of a car and dragged through the street as cheering men, most of them in Western-style clothing, ran alongside and cheered, according to witnesses and officials.

The scene at the bridge over the Euphrates resembled a public lynching. Two badly burned corpses were hung upside down by ropes on the metal frame of the structure and members of the mob waved their arms in the air and posed for photos.

A sense of euphoria appeared to envelope the crowd in a city that has been the scene of nearly constant fighting with the Army and Marines since the fall of the Hussein regime. It also may have included an element of revenge in the wake of a series of firefights late last Friday in which one Marine and at least 18 insurgents and others were killed.

U.S. military forces did not arrive on the scene until several hours after Wednesday’s attack, witnesses said. A few Iraqi police officers watched the violence unfold, but did little to stop it.

At a briefing in Baghdad seven hours after the attack, a senior U.S. military official said he did not know whether U.S. Marines had yet arrived on the scene to offer assistance and restore the peace.

“It’s my understanding that the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is currently either there or going there,” Kimmitt said.

Asked whether military officials believed that it was too dangerous to enter the city, Kimmitt said, “I don’t think that there is any place in this country that the coalition forces feel is too dangerous to go into.”

Kimmitt blamed the attack on supporters of Hussein’s former regime. “Fallouja remains one of those cities in Iraq that just don’t get it,” he said. “It’s a former Baathist stronghold. This was a city that profited immeasurably and immensely under the former regime.”

Officials with the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority condemned the attack and characterized it as an isolated incident that did not reflect the views of the majority of Iraqis.

“The people who pulled those bodies out and engaged in this attack against the contractors are not people we are here to help,” said coalition spokesman Dan Senor.

“They are people who have a much different vision for the future of Iraq than the overwhelming majority of Iraqis. They are people who want Iraq to turn back to an era of mass graves, of rape rooms and torture chambers and chemical attacks,” he said.

Several Fallouja residents called the incident a response to last week’s deadly firefight between insurgents and Marines -- who recently arrived to take control of the volatile city in the so-called Sunni Triangle.

“This is retaliation for the genocide of last Friday’s attacks,” said Fadhil Dulaimi, a Fallouja resident.

The assault came only a few hours after five soldiers with the 1st Engineer Battalion of the 1st Brigade of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division were killed several miles away when a powerful improvised device exploded beneath their 20-ton armored personnel carrier. The five were part of a convoy hunting for explosives along rural roads outside Habbaniya, a farming village in the Sunni Triangle.

Iraqis in Fallouja said Wednesday’s attacks took place in a climate marked by Iraqi frustration over the pace of the nation’s reconstruction and U.S. troops’ continuing raids into local mosques and private homes.

“As soon as Americans respect the people of Fallouja, we will start respecting them,” said the Fallouja car dealer, who would give his name only as Abu Ali. “The Americans have done nothing, and people are angry. Now when they see Americans, they want to kill them.”

In Baghdad, the attacks drew a mixture of shock and empathy.

Halla Samurrai, 34, a pharmacist in the Sunni neighborhood of Adamiya in western Baghdad, expressed distaste and distress over the Fallouja slayings, although she added that she understood Iraqi frustrations.

“I don’t approve of killing Americans,” she said. “But most Iraqis are illiterate. They don’t know what they want. They feel furious, and they don’t know how to show it.”

By early afternoon, downtown Fallouja remained tense, with many residents bracing for what they considered the inevitable counter-strike by U.S. troops.

Local clerics condemned the mutilation of the contractors’ bodies but did not criticize the initial attacks.

One resident predicted that violence would continue. “These retaliatory attacks are going to increase,” said Abdula Khamis. “The coming summer is going to be even hotter for Americans than the previous one.”

Times staff writers Tony Perry in Fallouja and Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad and special correspondent Said Rifai in Fallouja contributed to this report.