US Marines have not located any bodies in a mosque they bombed in Fallujah, an officer said Wednesday, after earlier indicating that up to 40 suspected insurgents were killed in the air strike."When we hit that building I thought we had killed all the bad guys, but when we went in they didn't find any bad guys in the building," Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne told AFP.
When asked to explain how the insurgents, who were believed to have been hiding inside after reportedly attacking US forces, escaped, he said: "I don't know."
But he speculated the insurgents may have fled after a Cobra helicopter gunship fired a Hellfire missile at the mosque, and before an aircraft dropped a laser-guided precision bomb.
He said it was possible that other insurgents in the flashpoint town west of Baghdad had dragged the bodies away in the 30-40 minutes before marines arrived to sweep the area. But he admitted there were no trails of blood.
Byrne earlier said that there were "as many as 40 rebels" inside the mosque and said the marines had wanted "to kill the people inside."
The bombing came after several hours of small arms and rocket-propelled grenades fire from insurgents, which left five marines wounded.
All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
Quick Links
SpaceWar
Search SpaceWar
Subscribe To SpaceWar Express
