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"Marines are awake 24 hours. Stop hiding behind your women’s skirts and fight"
Sporadic gunfire between US forces and Iraqi insurgents interrupted a tenuous ceasefire around the besieged Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah, an AFP correspondent said. Iraqi rebels hit earlier Thursday the Jordanian hospital grounds outside eastern Fallujah with two mortar rounds, US Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne told AFP without giving further details of the attack. Byrne said his men were "definitely in the killing business now".

As dusk fell US forces exchanged machine gun fire and bombarded parts of the city, west of Baghdad, with grenade launchers. In a weapons cache first discovered Wednesday forces unearthed 200 rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), a US-made (TOW) missile, and improvised explosive devices -- including Pepsi cans rigged with explosives -- Byrne said. On Wednesday night, gunships had fired on rebel positions in Fallujah and more strikes were expected through the night Thursday. "I intend to use AC 130 gunships every night," Byrne said.

A shaky five-day-old truce in Fallujah was extended for 48 hours on Wednesday to allow for two hospitals to open. But despite the deal clashes continued on Wednesday and Thursday between US forces and Iraqi guerrillas there, and Byrne said US fighters were trying to draw insurgents out into battle. US military trucks had begun blaring taunting messages and heavy metal music at suspected rebel sites in the hopes of luring out guerrillas to kill them. "Marines are awake 24 hours. Stop hiding behind your women’s skirts and fight," loudspeakers stacked on trucks blared out. At least two rebels with RPGs came charging out to fight Wednesday night and were killed after being taunted by the announcement and music, Byrne said.
Suckers. How's it feel to be dead?
"We’re not going to defile a mosque but we’re definitely in the killing business now," he said. Fallujah’s second-largest mosque, Hadret Mohammediya, was shelled earlier on Thursday by US forces. The strike at about 6:30 pm (1430 GMT) destroyed the top of its minaret and religious school, while parts of its outer wall were also hit and most of the windows shattered. US military commanders have said they will not shy from firing at mosques in the city if they are being used by insurgents to attack troops. Byrne also said that at one site marines had found drug paraphernalia scattered around, fueling suspicions that some insurgents might be sedating themselves before heading into battle. "They may have sedated themselves on morphine or other stuff," Byrne said.
That should make them alert and ferocious...
There were no indications when the ceasefire in Fallujah would end although officially the truce was expected to end Friday. US marine officers said on condition of anonymity it could be "a number of days" before the situation changes. Hospital sources said earlier on Thursday that five Iraqis had been killed and three others wounded in clashes between US troops and insurgents in Fallujah despite the truce after days of clashes which have claimed hundreds of lives. In Washington on Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described the situation in Fallujah as "largely stabilized".
Posted by: TS 2004-04-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=30658