According to IDF officers, among the crowd of men, women, and children, a number of armed Palestinians were spotted. As they approached the Girit outpost, a helicopter fired one missile into an open area not far from the demonstrators as a warning for them to turn back. According to footage taken from the helicopter and drones, the missile exploded far from the demonstrators in an open area and no one was hit.

Undeterred, the protesters continued and the helicopter then fired flares into the open area ahead of them, which also failed to stop the crowd. Then soldiers directed machine-gun fire at the wall of an abandoned building as another warning.

When this failed to stop the crowd, a tank fired four shells at the same building and apparently one of the shells caused an explosion that hit demonstrators.

Yaron said the footage of the entire incident taken from the helicopter and drones is still being studied, but noted that shortly after the tank fired a number of shells there was an explosion. The road used by the protesters was strewn with bombs placed by terrorists against soldiers, she said.

"Our soldiers have not yet used the road, because it has been rigged with bombs and has not yet been cleared and made secure," she said. Asked why the tank fired four shells instead of one, Yaron said, "Deterrence fire in accordance with regulations is carried out in a series of three and one."

The resistance fighters inside Fallujah, said to number about 2,000, are divided into several factions. Four powerful Islamic leaders inside the city exert a measure of authority over most of the mujahedin; Mohammed and his group are loyal to a revered imam who preaches at one of the city's bigger mosques. It was this imam, we learn, who gave orders that any foreigner who enters Jolan without his permission should be thoroughly questioned. But other mujahedin in the city aren't beholden to any of the local clerics. These include foreign fighters and hard-line local jihadis, men who share the same inflexible hatred of the West as those who beheaded the American contractor Nick Berg last week. Mohammed tells us we were "lucky" that his group, rather than the hard-liners, had arrested us. "They are in the neighborhood," he warns us.

Mohammed and the other fighters we talk to make it clear that the quiet in Fallujah isn't likely to last. Although General Abdul-Latif and his Fallujah Brigade managed to enforce an uneasy ceasefire, the U.S. Marines who surround the city have demanded that the resistance give up its heavy weapons, turn over all those involved in the Blackwater murders and expel foreign fighters from the city. Those demands, all the insurgents we spoke to agree, are unacceptable. "We won't stop fighting until the occupation ends," Mohammed says. After eight hours, the resistance finally accepts that we are journalists, not spies, and allows us to leave. My colleague and I lie down in the back of a battered car and are driven through town—past crowds of heavily armed mujahedin—to safety at the imam's mosque. "You have remained in our city much longer than you expected," the cleric says apologetically, smiling and clasping our hands. There isn't any talk about staying around for supper.

"For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib [prison] and they refused.

"So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."