FALLOUJA, Iraq — The war was supposed to be over. But the deaths of four U.S. soldiers and the wounding of 15 others in just two days in armed attacks across Iraq raise the troubling prospect that a fresh wave of violent resistance to U.S. occupation is beginning.
A rocket-propelled grenade attack early Tuesday in this Euphrates River city had the earmarks of a planned military operation. The casualty toll -- two Americans dead and nine wounded -- was not dissimilar to many days of the war itself. It was followed later in the day by another rocket-propelled grenade attack in Baghdad, this one aimed at U.S. military police.
American foot soldiers also reported coming under sporadic fire while on patrol in the capital.
The attacks appeared to be independent of one another, and it was impossible to say immediately whether they might have been planned by people loyal to the former regime or whether they were separate acts of violence by angry people living in a society in which guns are everywhere. Like two other fatal assaults on U.S. forces that took place Monday, in Baghdad and Hadithah, Tuesday's violence came against the backdrop of rising anger and frustration in the country after seven weeks of U.S. control.
Many Iraqis are livid at the perceived shortcomings of the U.S. occupation, particularly what they see as a slowness to pay salaries and provide basic services, and at the recent decisions of the U.S. civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, to dissolve the national army and put off until at least July forming an interim Iraqi government.
The Americans came under heavy fire at a Fallouja checkpoint around midnight while conducting vehicle searches.
They responded with their Bradley fighting vehicles, armed with .50-caliber guns, and with small-arms fire, killing three Iraqis and capturing six others who apparently were violating international laws of war by firing from a mosque, defense officials said.
An Army medical evacuation helicopter was damaged by a Bradley that struck it while maneuvering into a firing position.
The names of the wounded and dead were withheld pending notification of relatives.
Late Tuesday, an attack took place in Baghdad: Two U.S. military police officers were injured, one seriously, after two rocket-propelled grenade attacks on a police station in northwest Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Clint Mundinger of the Army's 709th Military Police Battalion, told Associated Press.
