- Title: IRAQ: Six teenage boys are killed in Ramadi while four US Marines die in Falluja
- Date: 6th January 2006
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) ABU MOHAMMED, AN EYE WITNESS SAYING: "The U.S. soldiers were walking here with a patrol, they went in this street and we were waiting in that cafeteria (points) we were trying to go home. When we looked at them we saw one of them was killed. Gunmen attacked them. They (gunmen) were carrying RBGs and different kinds of weapons."
- Embargoed: 21st January 2006 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Iraq
- Country: Iraq
- Topics: International Relations,Defence / Military
- Reuters ID: LVAATJOIWG06TVID7LWGWA34BXHE
- Story Text: Three U.S. Marines were killed in three separate assaults in the Iraqi city of Falluja on Sunday (January 8) and one was killed in a bomb attack close to the city on Saturday (January 7), the U.S. military said.
"The US soldiers were walking here with a patrol, they went in this street and we were waiting in that cafeteria (points) we were trying to go home. When we looked at them we saw one of them was killed. Gunmen attacked them. They (gunmen) were carrying RBGs and different kinds of weapons," said Abu Mohammed.
The U.S. military said the three who died on Sunday were all killed by small arms fire while conducting combat operations.
In a separate statement issued later, it said the fourth Marine was killed when his vehicle was hit by an improvised bomb during a patrol near the town of al-Karmah on Saturday.
Witnesses said on Saturday (January 7) that a U.S. military plane shelled a residential area in Ramadi, killing six teenage boys.
According to witnesses, the boys were playing near their houses in the city of Ramadi when the U.S. military planes shelled the area.
Ramadi, the capital of semi-lawless Anbar province, is a base of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
U.S. and Iraqi troops have launched a series of offensives in Anbar over the past few months aimed at securing western Iraq against the insurgents.
"They were children, only 16 and 17 years old. They were playing here and cleaning the sewage near their houses. The planes hit them with rockets, we did find their bodies but flesh and blood," said an unidentified eye witness near the site of the attack.
The U.S. forces were not immediately available to comment on the attack.
In Baghdad, gunmen attacked a truck that was carrying vehicles for the Iraqi police in western Baghdad on Sunday, setting it ablaze.
The attack took place in al-Amiriya neighbourhood of western Baghdad. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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