FALLOUJA, Iraq — U.S. commanders on the ground have found no direct evidence to substantiate allegations by the military's Central Command that a deadly explosion at a mosque compound may be related to bomb-making activities, officers said Thursday.
"I don't think you could say any way definitively that that was what was going on," said Capt. Joffery Watson, intelligence officer for occupation troops in this restive town west of Baghdad. "I have no idea where CentCom got that."
In a brief statement Wednesday, the Central Command said the explosion that killed as many as 10 people Monday night "was apparently related to a bomb-manufacturing class that was being taught inside the mosque."
Lt. Col. Eric Wesley of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Armored Division, which is occupying Fallouja, said Thursday, "I'm unaware of the bomb school information."
The varying accounts of the mosque blast left commanders here in a difficult position. Some even suggested privately that the Central Command had gotten it wrong.
Many residents blamed the explosion on a U.S. warplane, and witness accounts of such an aircraft above the mosque before the blast were disseminated widely in the Arabic-language press. Neighborhood residents dubbed the dead men "martyrs" in a fight pitting Islam against an occupying power.
U.S. military officials have downplayed the possible presence of explosives in the Fallouja mosque as an isolated instance and not a sign of a growing Islamic front against occupation forces.
U.S. authorities have reported sporadic attacks from the vicinity of mosques and have even arrested some prayer leaders in the country.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the U.S.-led ground forces in Iraq, said in Baghdad on Thursday that the Fallouja site was a suspected bomb factory.
But he also said: "I am here to tell you that over the last month, Fallouja has been a great example of cooperation. Most of the local sheiks are cooperating."
For weeks, U.S. troops have been working to calm a potentially incendiary state of affairs in this city, which has emerged as a caldron of anti-U.S. activity. The last thing they want is to inflame passions further.
Military authorities here have avoided jumping to quick conclusions publicly about the cause of the explosion, which killed the mosque imam, or preacher, Sheik Laith Khalil Dahham, 35, and as many as nine other men described by residents as religious students.
