US army 'will target' mosques

2004-04-08 07:49

Washington - A senior US army officer, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, said on Wednesday that Iraqi mosques will be targeted by his troops if they are used as fire bases or weapons storage depots.

Kimmitt spoke to CNN from Baghdad. He said US forces had dropped two 227kg precision-guided bombs on a mosque compound in Fallujah, Iraq, because local insurgents were using the compound as cover to fire at US soldiers.

"It (a mosque) has a special status under the Geneva Convention that it can't be attacked," Kimmitt said, adding "however, it can be attacked when there is a military necessity."

He said such religious sites would be struck if his forces believed insurgents were "storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence, (or) executing violence from its grounds."

Kimmit said he could not confirm precise damage to the mosque or additional reports that a second Fallujah mosque had been attacked by US troops.

When asked to explain how insurgents, who were believed to have been hiding inside the mosque after reportedly attacking US forces, escaped, Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne replied: "I don't know."

Byrne, in Fallujah, said the insurgents may have fled after a Cobra helicopter gunship fired a Hellfire missile at the mosque, and before an aircraft dropped a laser-guided precision bomb.

He had earlier suggested that up to 40 insurgents had been killed in the airstrikes.

'Dragged the bodies away'

Byrne said it was possible other insurgents in the flashpoint town west of Baghdad had dragged the bodies away in the 30-40 minutes before marines arrived to sweep the area.

The bombing came after several hours of small arms and rocket-propelled grenades fire from insurgents, which left five marines wounded.

Hundreds of US marines have swarmed into Fallujah during the third day of "Operation Vigilant Resolve" to flush out insurgents who killed and brutalised four American contractors here last week.

Asked if the marines had made any arrests related to the killings of the four contractors, Kimmitt replied: "I know that they have picked up what they consider to be 15 or so targets.

"It could well be that those targets may have amongst them some of the perpetrators of this atrocity."

Earlier, all the city mosques called for a "jihad" against occupation forces amid intense bombardments and aircraft overflights, a correspondent said.

Interviewed with Kimmitt, a spokesman for the US-led coalition in Iraq, Dan Senor, said: "As we get closer and closer to June 30th, as we hand over sovereignty here, there are going to be these bumps in the road where violent mobs and two-bit thugs are going to try and throw this process off course."

Kimmitt added that coalition forces would remain beyond that date to help ensure security.

"We've never suggested that on June 30th that somehow the coalition would pull out, leaving the responsibility of external and public security to the Iraqis," he said.

- AFP