Two Iraqi soldiers killed, six wounded in Fallujah
Pakistan Times Monitoring Report

FALLUJAH (Iraq): Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and six civilians wounded when an army camp was shelled in a residential area in the flashpoint western city of Fallujah Friday, according to hospital officials.

Dr. Raed Mohammed of Fallujah General Hospital said US forces fired heavy artillery on the southeastern neighbourhood of Shuhada, leaving two people dead and six wounded, four of them seriously.

Later, a second official, Doctor Nabil Khouri, identified the dead as two Iraqi soldiers and said the area hit was an Iraqi army camp bordering a residential neighbourhood.

However, it was impossible to confirm whether insurgents or US forces had shelled the area. It seemed doubtful the Americans would shell an Iraqi army camp. The US military had no immediate information on the attack.

Fallujah is a bastion of the insurgency against US-led forces in Iraq. A US air strike on a suspected militant safe house in the city killed 20 people late Wednesday.

Aerial Assaults

The US military has resorted to aerial assaults on alleged insurgent hideouts in Fallujah since the city became a no-go zone for troops after an April offensive ended with an agreement for Iraqis to police themselves.

Within weeks, Islamic militants imposed full control over Fallujah, elbowing aside the local police and an ad-hoc force of Iraqi army veterans, named the Fallujah Brigade, formed to restore security.●