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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Roundup in Falluja |
| 2004-04-06 |
| U.S. troops armed with photographs and other things have captured a number of people in the restive city of Falluja in Iraq in a search for those responsible for an ambush that killed four American security guards there last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday. "The (U.S.) forces have cordoned off the city. They have photographs of a good many people who were involved in the attacks against the individuals and they have been conducting raids in the city against high-value targets," Rumsfeld told reporters in Norfolk, Virginia. The United States says it will end the insurrection by Moqtada Sadr, which has taken the lives of a growing number of U.S. troops and dozens of Iraqis. Washington also has vowed to find those responsible for killing the four American security guards last week in the Sunni city of Falluja. The bodies of the slain Americans were mutilated and dragged through the streets. "Clearly all of the people in the city of Falluja were not involved in what took place," said Rumsfeld, who praised the performance of the U.S. troops. Rumsfeld told reporters that he had seen no indication that the growing violence in Iraq would push the Bush administration to postpone a scheduled handover of power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June. He said there were about 135,000 U.S. troops currently in the country in a transition that originally planned to draw the force down to about 115,000 in the summer. Any decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq would have to come from commanders on the scene, he added. |
| Posted by:sludj |