FALLUJAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marines in the third day of a battle to pacify the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah, Iraq, fired a rocket and dropped a 500-pound, laser-guided bomb on a mosque compound Wednesday. Witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. \nMoreover, Shiite-inspired violence spread to key cities in Iraq.\nThe fighting in Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi, Iraq -- just east of Baghdad -- has killed 15 Marines since Monday and was part of an intensified uprising involving other Sunni towns in northern and central Iraq, and Shiite population centers south of the capital.\nMarines waged a six hour battle around the Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque with militants holed up inside before a Cobra helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at the base of its minaret and an F-16 dropped the bomb, said Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne.\nThe fighting began when a Marine vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the mosque, wounding five Marines, and a large U.S. force converged on it, Byrne said.\nWitnesses said the strike came as worshippers had gathered for afternoon prayers.\nAn Associated Press reporter saw cars ferrying out dead and wounded. Witnesses said part of a wall surrounding the mosque compound was destroyed, but the main building was not damaged.\nIn Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told CNN that from photos of the mosque he had seen, "the actual mosque structure itself" was not damaged.\nIts minaret was damaged, but still standing, an AP reporter said.\n"It is a holy place, there is no doubt about it," Kimmitt added. "It has a special status under the Geneva Convention that it can't be attacked.\n"However, it can be attacked when there is a military necessity brought on by the fact that the enemy is storing weapons, using weapons, inciting violence and executing violence from its grounds," he said.\nBecause casualties were rushed to makeshift clinics in private homes and mosques, the number of dead and wounded was unclear.\nDuring fighting elsewhere in Fallujah, U.S. forces seized another mosque, the al-Muadidi mosque, and a Marine climbed its minaret and fired down on gunmen, witnesses said. Insurgents hit the minaret with rocket-propelled grenades, causing it to partly collapse, the AP reporter said.\nInsurgents also blew up two highway overpasses into the city to prevent U.S. troops from using them. A helicopter fired rockets at three houses, and the reporter saw at least five wounded people, including a young boy, being pulled out of one them.
Byrne said the Marines controlled about a quarter of Fallujah.\nDefense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said U.S. forces launched the operation in Fallujah to capture insurgents involved in attacks on Americans, including the ones who mutilated and burned the bodies of four U.S. civilians ambushed last week. He said the troops had pictures and names of those involved and were not attacking the town as a whole.\nBut militants, who have wide popular support, fiercely resisted the U.S. raids into the city center and attacked American troops encircling the city of 200,000. The intensity of the resistance apparently prompted U.S. forces to bring in helicopters, tanks and AC-130 gunships that have pounded suspected militant sites in the densely populated neighborhoods.\nSince Sunday, 34 Americans, two other coalition soldiers and more than 190 Iraqis had been killed in fighting across the country. The Iraqi figure did not include those killed at the mosque.\nKimmitt vowed to "destroy" the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which has been behind the wave of attacks and street fighting with coalition troops in southern cities and Baghdad this week.\nAl-Sadr said Iraq will become "another Vietnam" for the United States unless it transfers power to Iraqis who are not connected with the U.S.-led occupation authority.\n"I call upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army, to help them in the transfer of power to honest Iraqis," al-Sadr said in a statement from his office in the southern city of Najaf, Iraq. "Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers."\nAl-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army launched heavy gunbattles against coalition forces in the streets of three southern cities Wednesday and, for the first time, in the north. Al-Sadr fighters battled American troops in the town of Baqouba, Iraq, northeast of Baghdad, hitting a U.S. helicopter with small arms fire. The OH-58 Kiowa chopper was damaged and forced to land, but the two crew members were unharmed.\nAnd Shiite gunmen drove Ukrainian forces out of the southern city of Kut, Iraq -- raising concerns over the ability of U.S. allies to control al-Sadr's uprising.\nAfter gunbattles overnight killed 12 Iraqis, the Ukrainians withdrew from Kut, and al-Sadr followers swept into their base, seized weapons stores and planted their flag on a nearby grain silo.
