7-7-3

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - The gruesome death of an Iraqi man whose head was shot off inflamed anti-American rage in the volatile town of Ramadi on Monday after a night of armed attacks which wounded four U.S. troops.
 
Several Iraqis gathered around his bullet ridden car where a piece of skull lay among the shattered windshield glass on the floorboard.
 
Another crowd walked past pools of blood at Ramadi General Hospital and watched a doctor pull plastic sheeting off his corpse that was punctured by bullets they said were fired by U.S. troops occupying the town, around 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad.
 
"You will see what will happen to the Americans now. You will see what we will do to them," hospital administrator Taha Hussein told Reuters.
 
On Saturday, seven recruits to a U.S.-backed Iraqi police force were killed in Ramadi when a remote-controlled bomb exploded outside a police station.
 
Ramadi is part of a mainly Sunni Muslim area to the north and west of Baghdad where U.S. forces have faced much of the most violent resistance to their occupation of Iraq The region was a bastion of support for Saddam Hussein himself a Sunni.
 
"The Americans are terrorists. They don't respect us. They enter our houses and frisk our women. They handcuff us at checkpoints and step on our necks," said Abu Mohsen.
 
"Now look at this. They just shoot at cars and kill innocent people," he said pointing to the body of the decapitated man on a stretcher outside the morgue.
 
CONFUSION
 
The circumstances surrounding the death of the man, identified by a hospital official as Ibrahim Himoud, were unclear.
 
Iraqi witnesses said U.S. troops brought him to the hospital and said he was shot after running a checkpoint. They also said a second civilian was killed.
 
A U.S. military spokesman said the decapitated man was caught in the crossfire after six Iraqi assailants ambushed a U.S. position and it was not clear who shot him.
 
A spokesman in Baghdad said four soldiers had been wounded in the ambush.
 
"At about that time, one of our vehicles was attempting to impose a roadblock. A Toyota truck approached. One of the men in the Toyota truck was shot and killed. The other was detained for questioning," Captain Michael Calvert told Reuters.
 
The mortar attack on Sunday night was the fifth in Ramadi in seven days, said Calvert. Rocket-propelled grenades have been the weapons of choice in recent weeks.
 
The U.S.-backed mayor's office was also hit by small arms fire and then grenade attacks a few minutes later, Calvert said.
 
U.S. troops are not taking any risks. They sit sideways in their vehicles with M-16 rifles ready for any assailant on the grim streets of Ramadi.
 
At the entrance of a heavily fortified palace complex once owned by Saddam, U.S. troops watched a truck tow a jeep with multiple bullet holes in its windshield.
 
"We want Saddam. Look what the Americans are doing. They are killing us. The attacks on Americans will get worse. It will be Jihad (holy war)," said Yassin Mishaal.
 
 
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