At Least 97 Iraqis Killed In Fallujah, 40 In Ramadi

"F16 helicopters shelled the densely-populated areas of the city, leaving45 inhabitants dead and 65 others injured for the day," Aljazeera correspondent reported Wednesday, April7 , citing official medical counts.

The correspondent said that American warplanes attacked a mosque, causing the immediate death of civilians in a car barking outside.

He said the mosque compound hosts the Fallujah branch of the Islamic Scholars Association.

The U.S. army admitted that a Cobra helicopter fighter slammed a Hell Fire missile and a laser-guided precision bomb into Abdulaziz Al-Samarai mosque in Fallujah Wednesday, killing up to 40 people, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"We want to kill the people inside," said Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne, claiming as many as 40 fighters were holding up inside.

It was not immediately clear if the 40 killed inside the mosque fall within the 45 death toll documented by hospitals.

At least 52 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, were killed and some 100 others injured overnight in U.S. bombing of the city.

Iraqi fighters reportedly shot down three U.S. helicopters and destroyed two jeeps and two armored vehicles.

Heavy rocket and machine-gun fire could be heard while black smoke billowed into the air as marines took cover behind abandoned metal shops and debris in the streets.

"I think this is worst than the first one (the war last year)," Richard Savick, a veteran of the Gulf War, told AFP.

Baby injured

Marines were using aggressive tactics to draw out the fighters and then chase them.

"We chased them; we keep it as aggressive as possible," Corporal Jay Picard.

Marines battled Iraqis wearing black fatigues or civilian clothes, with their faces shrouded by headscarves, after tanks, amphibious assault vehicles and Humvees rolled into the town late Monday, April5 .

All day Tuesday, the sounds of exploding mortar rounds and of machine-gun fire shook the city as fighters ran in packs of four or five, appearing out of alleys and on roof tops, spraying bullets and shooting off rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

Iraqi fighters put up Tuesday tough resistance to the occupation troops, forcing them to pull back to the outskirts of the conflictive city.

TV footage showed the havoc wrecked by the grisly U.S. incursion, which reduced several houses to rubble and destroyed scores of shops, the main source of livelihood for many residents in the town,50 km west of Baghdad.

The only hospital in the city was shelled Monday, April5 , by U.S. helicopters.

Doctors said the situation is extremely serious as some of the injured have bled to death, the Doha-based newscaster added.

Fallujah residents appealed to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and the international community to intervene and end the crippling U.S. blockade.

The town had been sealed off at dawn Monday and U.S. troops were only letting cars with Fallujah license plates enter or leave the town.

The offensive, dubbed "Vigilant Resolve", involves two marine battalions, or more than2 , 000troops, based near Fallujah, a bastion of anti-occupation resistance.

It coincides with deadly clashes between Shiites and U.S.-led occupation troops across the country, which killed at least 100 people and injured some 400 others.

Eight Demonstrators killed

Eight Iraqis were killed and 12 others injured Wednesday by the U.S. forces during a demonstration west of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to protest the crackdown on Fallujah, police and medics said.

Awad Khalaf al-Juburi, police chief in Hawija, 50 kilometers ( 30miles) west of Kirkuk, said there had been a demonstration by some1 , 500people to denounce the massacres committed by the American army in Fallujah.

At the end of it, "some of them started firing at the American soldiers, who fired back, killing eight people, including a child, and wounded 12 others."

Ramadi Victims

The ghastly raids on Fallujah came as at least 40 Iraqis were killed and dozens others injured in a separate U.S. military attacks on Ramadi, 110 km west of Baghdad, Aljazeera said.

"The U.S. forces barred ambulance vehicles from having access to the wounded, as grinding battles are raging in areas of the town," its correspondent said on air.

At least 12 U.S. Marines were killed and 24 others wounded Tuesday night in fierce battles with Iraqi fighters in Ramadi.

It was the highest single-day casualty toll suffered by U.S. forces since the beginning of the year, reported AFP.

Between 60 and 70 Iraqi fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons engaged with the U.S. occupation troops.

"We had about 12 dead and a couple dozen wounded," said a Pentagon official, who requested anonymity.

"We’re pretty sure we got most of them in much greater numbers than us," he argued.

Eight U.S. soldiers were killed and eight wounded in separate attacks around chaos-mired Baghdad over the past 48 hours.

The deaths raised to at least 628 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in resistance operations in Iraq since last year’s U.S.-led invasion, according to an AFP tally.