Fallujah

[Wolf]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Suspected insurgents killed four American civilian contractors in a grenade attack Wednesday in central Iraq, U.S. officials said.

Cheering residents in Fallujah pulled charred bodies from burning vehicles and hung them from a Euphrates River bridge.

Crowds gathered around the vehicles and dragged at least one of the bodies through the streets, witnesses said.

Residents pulled another body from one of the cars and beat it with sticks.

Also in the Fallujah region, five American soldiers died in a roadside bombing near Habbaniya, the U.S. military said.

The fatalities bring the U.S. military death toll in Iraq to 600, 408 of them in hostile action.

In the attack on the civilians, witnesses said two Mitsubishi vehicles left a military base east of Fallujah to make their way into the city, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Baghdad.

The vehicles turned onto a Fallujah street as men -- whose faces were covered by headscarves -- split into two groups and threw hand grenades at the cars, witnesses said.

The assailants then sprayed the burning cars with small-arms fire.

Video showed crowds chanting and cheering at the scene, with charred corpses hanging from the bridge over the Euphrates.

The U.S. State Department said the U.S. citizens worked for a company contracted by the coalition to work in Iraq.

Fallujah is part of al Anbar province in the "Sunni Triangle," a region north and west of the capital that has been a hotbed of opposition to the U.S. presence.

The White House condemned the "horriffic attacks" by people "trying to prevent democracy from moving forward," spokesman Scott McClellan said.

A changeover of power from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Marines is under way in al Anbar.

"There's a small core element [in Fallujah] that doesn't seem to get it," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, an Army spokesman who confirmed the four killed in the two-vehicle convoy were not military personnel.

Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor said those who exulted over the attack "are not people we are here to help. They are people who have a much different vision for the future of Iraq and the overwhelming majority of Iraqis."

Also Wednesday, two bodyguards for the governor of Diala province and three civilians were wounded in Baqubah, north of Baghdad, when an attacker pulled a car up beside the governor's car and detonated a bomb, Kimmitt said.

The bomb damaged vehicles and a building, but the governor was unharmed, he said.

In other violence Wednesday, three British troops were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a British Defense Ministry spokesman said.

Spokesman Paul Sykes said the troops are receiving medical treatment. One of them was seriously injured, Sykes said, but he didn't know the exact nature of the wounds.

In northern Iraq, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police detained 20 people Tuesday suspected of anti-coalition activities:

Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division and Iraqi police detained 10 people in Mosul. Iraqi police in Mosul also apprehended two people wanted in connection with a drive-by shooting.

Soldiers from 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment detained five suspects speeding away from the scene of a rocket attack in Hammam Al Alil near Mosul. The soldiers detained two suspects after searching door-to-door in Hammam Al Alil. Also in Hammam Al Alil, soldiers detained one suspect at a traffic control point.

CNN's Kevin Flower, Melissa Gray in London, Sue Kroll, Vivian Paulsen and Auday Sadik contributed to this report.

[ordos45]

Yes, so much for being greeted with dancing in the streets like the President said we would.  It is a horrible thing to mutilate the bodies of the dead...

[Dante]

Revenge against the living is more difficult.

[ordos45]

True, the living can defend themselves.

[Wolf]

Indeed. Even targeting civilians is a cowardly act, but to dance in the streets glorying after mutilating a corpse? There is little that is more cowardly.

What do you think of the people that did this? What are they fighting for? What do they want?

[Dante]

The past back? I wouldn't call it cowardly though. Being afraid to attack the living, that may be cowardly or it may just be pragmatic. Attacking the dead now, that's kind of brave since the dead have living friends.

[alchemi2]

IMO the people taking in part in that barbaric display are as bad as the origonal attackers and should have been blown away, that would send a clear message of non tolerance to that behavior but no doubt the public outcry back home of all those dead innocents would have been decried as barbaric as well.

IMO sometimes you got to get down and dirty, to their level before you can educate them away from violence but then again violence begets violence.

[nemafakei]

A perfect candidate for the Iraq Issues thread, I reckon.

[Wolf]

(Copied from http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/ )

"Crime and punishment.

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What happened in Fallujah yesterday, when foreigner contractors were killed and disfigured, was more than I could take. I felt extremely angry, disgusted frustrated and desperate. What was worse is that it