Mutilation, not murders, condemned

From combined dispatches

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Muslim clerics yesterday condemned the mutilation this week of the bodies of four American civilians — but not the slayings — as U.S. intelligence sources identified the attackers as former members of Iraq’s paramilitary forces and “non-Iraqi Arabs.”

ABC News, citing the intelligence sources, reported yesterday that U.S. forces were expected to take decisive action against the attackers of the four contractors within the next several days, and that they knew who they were going after.

There was no sign of any U.S. military activity in the Fallujah area to suggest that retaliatory action for the grisly killings was imminent, despite U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer’s pledge that those who killed the workers for a North Carolina-based security firm and burned their bodies “will not go unpunished.”

The U.S. contractors were “targets of opportunity” who had the bad luck to drive into a planned ambush site, ABC quoted U.S. intelligence sources as saying.

Eyewitnesses have told intelligence sources there were seven to 18 assailants involved in the attack, ABC said.

It said Iraqi insurgents had set up several ambush points around Fallujah, and had stocked them with gasoline on the morning of the attack. Some townspeople had been warned to stay inside, the intelligence officials told the network.

Yesterday, Sheik Fawzi Nameq addressed 600 worshippers at a mosque opposite the mayor’s office, not far from the scene of the deadly ambush of the American civilians.

“Islam does not condone the mutilation of the bodies of the dead,” the cleric said.

“Why do you want to bring destruction to our city? Why do you want to bring humiliation to the faithful? My brothers, wisdom is required here,” said Sheik Nameq, who did not pass a judgment on the killings.

His sermon followed a directive issued by senior Fallujah clerics asking mosque imams to denounce the mutilation.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of U.S. military operations in Iraq, said condemning only the mutilations was not enough.

“That is only a partial answer,” Gen. Kimmitt said in an e-mail message to the Associated Press. “Murder of innocents should be condemned.”

The U.S. commander has pledged to hunt down those who carried out the killings, but said clashes could be avoided if Fallujah officials make arrests.

Fallujah residents said the U.S. forces should think carefully about any reaction.

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