Four Americans mutilated

Cheering crowds reveled in a barbaric orgy yesterday, slaughtering four Americans with grenades and dragging their charred and dismembered bodies through the streets of Fallujah before hanging them from lampposts.

“Yes to Islam. We make Fallujah the graveyard of the Americans,” onlookers shouted, according to a witness who arrived shortly after the killings but in time to see the grisly aftermath.

“It was as if they had turned a piece of Iraq into a piece of hell,” said the witness, Salih al-Qaisi, 31.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States condemns these “horrific, despicable attacks” in the “strongest possible terms.”

“The stakes are high in Iraq, and this is a time of testing,” Mr. McClellan said. “The enemies of freedom, the enemies of the Iraqi people, are trying to shake our will, but they cannot. We will not be intimidated.”

The four victims were civilian contractors for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, U.S. officials in Baghdad said last night. Their names were not released pending notification of families.

However, early evidence indicated they worked for Blackwater Security Consulting, a company based in Moyock, N.C., the company said in a statement. The security firm hires former military members from the United States and other countries to provide security training and guard services. In Iraq, the company was hired by the Pentagon to provide security for convoys that delivered food in the Fallujah area, the company statement said.

The men, armed and wearing flak jackets, were ambushed with grenades as they drove in two sport utility vehicles past a popular restaurant in downtown Fallujah, about 50 yards from the mayor’s office.

Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim city about 30 miles west of Baghdad, the capital, has been the scene of almost daily gunbattles between coalition forces and anticoalition insurgents.

In another incident 12 miles away, five U.S. soldiers died when their vehicle ran over a bomb planted along the roadway, making for one of the bloodiest days for coalition forces since a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was shot down near Fallujah in January, killing the nine soldiers on board.

The attack in Fallujah evoked memories of the October 1993 downing of two U.S. helicopters in Somalia, where cheering mobs dragged the corpses of some of the 18 dead Army Rangers through the streets of Mogadishu.

In some ways, the mutilation yesterday was even more grotesque, and the city’s U.S.-trained police force appeared powerless to step in.

“I thought I saw the people pull one of the dead bodies out of the car and pour gasoline over it, and then they set fire to it. They were very happy and praising God at their good luck at killing Americans,” said Lt. Omar Khalil of the Fallujah police department.

Television footage showed one of the bodies being beaten by a boy with a metal pipe, and witnesses said at least two of the bodies were dragged behind cars down the main street of Fallujah.

The Associated Press said one of the cars had a poster on its window of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the Palestinian militant group Hamas who was assassinated recently by the Israeli military in Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

Other television footage showed a man kicking and stomping on the head of one incinerated body. Two of the bodies later were hanged from lampposts on an iron bridge across the Euphrates River.

“This is the fate of all Americans who come to Fallujah,” Muhammad Nafik, one of the crowd, told the Reuters news agency. The agency said some body parts were pulled off and left hanging from a telephone cable.

In Washington, Mr. McClellan grew quiet when asked to comment on the television images.

“It is offensive. It is despicable the way that these individuals have been treated,” he said. “And we hope everybody acts responsibly in their coverage of it. Certainly, our thoughts and prayers are with the families.”

Fallujah has gone barely 48 hours without attacks on U.S. troops since Iraq fell almost a year ago.

Hatred of the U.S. military has run high since last April, when soldiers killed 15 persons at an anti-American rally in the city, where many remain loyal to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath Party.

Sunnis, who formed the backbone of Saddam’s power and feel threatened by the rise of rival Muslim Shi’ite political strength, have vowed to force U.S. troops out of the city.

U.S. Marines recently took over authority in the region from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and have engaged in fierce firefights with rebels in Fallujah.

U.S. military and civilian officials, meanwhile, have been warning of a surge in violence before the June 30 turnover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.

A State Department official, speaking on background, said the violence yesterday would not affect the planned transition date.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad that the coalition would not be deterred from its mission to rebuild Iraq, and that numerous reconstruction projects were moving forward.

• James G. Lakely and David Sands in Washington contributed to this report.