Bomb factories, body discovered in Fallujah

BAGHDAD — U.S. Marines have found beheading chambers, bomb-making factories and the mutilated body of a woman as they swept through Fallujah — turning up hard evidence of the city’s role in the campaign to drive American forces from Iraq.

Marines yesterday showed off what they called a bomb-making factory, where insurgents prepared roadside explosives and car bombs that have killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops.

Wires, cell phones, Motorola hand-held radios and a box packed with C4 plastic explosives sat in the dark building down an alley, along with three balaclava-style masks reading: “There is only one god, Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.”

“It’s all significant because this is not the kind of stuff an average household has,” said Lt. Kevin Kimner, 25, of Cincinnati, assigned to the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. “This is better than Radio Shack.”

U.S. Marines said they also found the disemboweled body of a woman thought to be a Westerner wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket and lying in a street during a sweep for terrorist holdouts in central Fallujah yesterday.

Although the body had not been examined carefully, a Marine officer said on the condition of anonymity that he was “80 percent sure” that the victim was a Western woman.

Margaret Hassan, 59, director of CARE International in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq, are the only Western women known to have been abducted in Iraq.

The grisly discovery came after U.S. military officials forecast several more days of fighting against pockets of resistance, but declared that there were no more large concentrations of enemy fighters after nearly a week of intense urban combat.

“The perception of Fallujah being a safe haven for terrorists, that perception and the reality of it will be completely wiped off before the conclusion of this operation,” said Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force.

The surprisingly quick success came at a cost of at least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers, the military said. About 275 U.S. troops were wounded, although more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated that more than 1,200 insurgents were killed.

As the fighting ebbed in Fallujah, terrorist attacks appeared to escalate elsewhere in Sunni Muslim areas of central and northern Iraq.

Saboteurs set fire yesterday to four oil wells in Iraq’s northern fields, setting off successive explosions in Khabbaza, 12 miles northwest of Kirkuk, oil officials said.

Heavy explosions rattled central Baghdad near the Palestine and Sheraton hotels last night, followed by bursts of sporadic gunfire. The U.S. military said initial reports indicated that rockets or mortars had struck the area, killing two Iraqis and wounding a third.

About an hour later, several more large explosions rocked the green zone, headquarters of the U.S. and Iraqi leadership. At least one private security guard was killed. Clashes also were reported on Haifa Street, a center of insurgent support in the heart of the capital.

In Mosul, where an uprising broke out last week in support of the Fallujah defenders, militants raided two police stations, killing at least six Iraqi national guardsmen and wounding three others.

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