The Iraqi town of Samarra was partly devastated after ambushes of US troops sparked a massive response backed by helicopters in which local officials said eight civilians were killed and dozens more wounded by US fire.

Samarra's police chief, Colonel Ismail Mahmud Mohammed, said the guerrillas who attacked the US forces, wounding five soldiers and a civilian according to a US toll, had withdrawn by the time the Americans returned fire. He charged that the US troops had fired indiscriminately using all the weapons in their arsenal. Anguished residents, including middle-aged men, could be seen hugging each other in grief after the carnage on the streets, which tribal leaders warned would only increase support for Washington's foes in the mainly Sunni Muslim town.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a US soldier died of wounds he sustained when Iraqi gunmen attacked an army convoy on Monday near Habbaniyah, west of Baghdad.

US forces say they killed 46 insurgents in Sunday's showdown in Samarra.

The clashes came after "coordinated" ambushes of two convoys delivering new Iraqi currency to local banks, Colonel Fredrick Rudesheim, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, told a press conference at a military base outside town.

Asked about how much money was in the convoys, he said only that it was a "significant" amount.

The US colonel stressed that the money had already been successfully delivered when the insurgents opened fire on the convoys as they pulled away from the banks.

Captain Andy Deponai said the assailants had targeted not just the two banks to which the money was delivered but also the "routes of ingress and egress."

He said the insurgent force had been split into two groups of "anything from 30 to 40 individuals at each bank site".

"They split down to team- and squad-size elements so they could attack from all sides," he said. "They had pre-prepared explosives and improvised explosives on our route which we took into the city."

Deponai said the assailants wrapped their faces with headscarves.

Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves, commander of the 116th Armored Battalion, said an engineering convoy which had also been passing through Samarra came under attack with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Rudesheim vowed to "continue to take the fight to this enemy," slamming as "disinformation" charges by Iraqi police, hospital and municipal officials in Samarra that his troops fired indiscriminately.

He repeated the 46 killed figure, saying that it was not a firm toll based on a body count, but an estimate based on interviews with all the soldiers involved adding that 11 insurgents had been captured.

Earlier US commanders upped their toll to 54 without explaining whether the additional dead were insurgents or civilians.

Samarra's police chief, Colonel Ismail Mahmud Mohammed, said the guerrillas who attacked the US forces, wounding five soldiers and a civilian according to a US toll, had withdrawn by the time the Americans returned fire.

He charged that the US troops had fired indiscriminately using all the weapons in their arsenal.

Anguished residents, including middle-aged men, could be seen hugging each other in grief after the carnage on the streets, which tribal leaders warned would only increase support for Washington's foes in the mainly Sunni Muslim town.

Graffiti expressing support for the ousted Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein covered the walls of the city after the prolonged bombardments.

Iraqi children look through a window broken during a gun battle between U.S. troops and insurgents in Samarra, December 1, 2003. Nearly 80 percent of Iraqis have little or no trust in U.S.-led occupying forces and most place their faith in religious leaders instead, according to a major survey published in Britain on Monday. Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

Two Iranians making the pilgrimage to the city's Al-Askariya shrine, one of Shiite Islam's holiest, were killed when their bus came under fire just 30 meters (yards) from the main hospital, police said. Another nine were wounded.

Samarra hospital accident and emergency department anesthetist Bassem Ibrahim said "we received the bodies of eight civilians, including a woman and a child".

Hospital director Abed Tawfiq told AFP "more than 60 people wounded by gunfire and shrapnel from US rounds are being treated at the hospital."

Colonel Mohammad said around 20 of the wounded sustained their injuries while worshipping at a mosque during sunset prayers.

The impact of a rocket could be seen on one of the outer walls of the Al-Shafii mosque, some 50 meters (yards) from the hospital. Its windows had been shattered by the blast.

Ali Abdullah Amin, 12, who was being treated at the hospital for shrapnel wounds to the stomach and leg sustained at the mosque, told AFP his father had been killed and his five-year-old brother lightly injured in the firing.

At the hospital, Fleikh Hassan mourned his 22-year-old son Sabah. Two other sons -- Rashid, 18, and Fares, 32 -- were both in comas.

"We were in the garden, it was 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) and a shell landed in our garden," said their grief-stricken father.

There were also civilian casualties at the State Enterprise for Drugs Industries and Medical Appliances, where Sunday evening an AFP correspondent saw blood on the ground outside the factory gates before being forced to withdraw amid heavy mortar fire.

Shrapnel was later discovered lodged in the correspondent's car, just millimeters (a fraction of an inch) from the petrol tank.

"A company bus that ferries employees to and from work was hit by a US rocket just outside the factory gates," said the firm's administrative affairs director, Hassan Yassin, 54.

"A woman who was sitting just behind the driver was killed when the rocket came through the side window."

US commanders said they have met with the head of Samarra's city council and were working hard "to inform the people of Samarra as to what happened."

But Sheikh Qahtan Hajj Salem of the town's tribal council warned that the violence of the response would backfire against US troops.

"It is the first time that the town has been attacked with such violence," he said. "The US response to this attack can only strengthen the resistance."

Sheikh Salem added that the tribal council had decided to ask the Americans to "leave the town, to pull out completely from the built-up area."

© Copyright 2003 AFP

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