Global Policy Forum

By Dexter Filkins and Ian Fisher

American commanders vowed Monday that the killing of as many as 54 insurgents in this central Iraqi town would serve as a lesson to those fighting the United States, but Iraqis disputed the death toll and said anger against America would only rise. Accounts of a three-hour battle fought in the alleys and streets of Samarra on Sunday diverged radically, with Iraqis saying only eight people had been killed, several of them civilians.

At the morgue, Adnan Sahib Dafar, 52, an ambulance driver, pointed to a dead woman on a steel tray. The woman, Mr. Dafar said, had worked at the city's big pharmaceutical factory and had walked into the crossfire between American forces and Iraqi guerrillas that began with an attempted ambush of an American military convoy. "Is this woman shooting a rocket-propelled grenade?" he demanded, standing over the body. "Is she fighting?" There was only one other body, that of a gray-bearded old man, in the morgue.

Speaking in Brussels at a NATO defense ministers' meeting, Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, portrayed the fight here, apparently the most deadly since Saddam Hussein was ousted in April, as a grim lesson for America's foes. "They attacked, and they were killed," General Pace said of the insurgents. "So I think it will be instructive to them."

Speaking at the same meeting, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said such attacks were being mounted by "a limited number of people who are determined to kill innocent men, women and children." They are "being rounded up, captured, killed, wounded and interrogated," he said. But on the streets of Samarra, an hour's drive north of Baghdad and just down the road from Tikrit, the hometown of Mr. Hussein, the lessons of the battle, and even its precise nature, seemed far from clear. It appeared from the anger among Iraqis in Samarra that America faces a fundamental dilemma: As it steps up the pressure on the insurgents who are killing Americans and Iraqis in growing numbers, the very Iraqis they are trying to win over may be alienated. "If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself," said Satar Nasiaf, 47, a shopkeeper who said he had watched two Iraqi civilians fall to American fire. "The Americans were shooting in every direction."

While American commanders said the Iraqi body count had come from precise reports filed immediately after a close-range battle, hospital officials said Monday that they could account for, at most, eight dead, with most of those probably civilians. The commanders said they were not surprised by the dearth of bodies. They do not routinely collect the enemy's dead from the battlefield, they said, and the guerrillas were unlikely to take their dead to the morgues.

The Pentagon typically does not publicize the number of enemy dead or wounded to avoid comparisons to the frequent enemy body counts in the Vietnam War, counts that ultimately proved to be a poor indicator of American military performance. But after weeks of suffering casualties from an enemy that detonates roadside bombs from afar and fires mortars under cover of darkness, American military officials seemed to relish the opportunity on Monday to claim credit for dealing the fighters a punishing blow. "They got whacked, and won't try that again," a senior military official in Washington said. The Pentagon insisted the body count was accurate.

The fight began when two American convoys that carry cash to two banks here rumbled into this hard-line Baathist city on Sunday with tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees. Such convoys had been attacked before, and the Americans were ready. As if on cue, the guerrillas attacked, but according to American commanders, the Iraqis suffered a devastating defeat. The battle ended, they said, with as many as 54 insurgents dead and only 5 Americans wounded.

Sunday's battle was the largest since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat over and the guerrilla war began. "We didn't have the immediate intelligence that we knew it would happen, but we had to be prepared for it," Col. Fred Rudesheim, who oversees the city, said Monday. "And our soldiers responded as they have been trained to, with the immediate action that they know to take." But as local Iraqis began dragging away the wreckage and counting their dead on Monday, it seemed clear that the guerrilla war being fought north and west of Baghdad had entered a troubling phase.

American soldiers showed here on Sunday that they can deliver a crushing amount of firepower. But the overwhelming military force seemed to anger many Iraqis, who said civilians had been killed. Colonel Rudesheim, saying he had not seen any reports of civilian dead, contended that battles like this one would more probably win the support of Iraqis. "Attacks, in our view, are attacks against freedom-loving Iraqis that want to move on with life, versus those that are trying to drag them back to something akin to the former regime," he said. "What we hear is that the people of Samarra are fed up." But many different emotions were on display here on Monday. Outside the hospital, a small crowd of Iraqis gathered around a bus they said had been destroyed in the fighting and began chanting an old refrain: "Our souls and our blood, we sacrifice to you, Saddam." The guerrilla war claimed another American life on Monday, in another Hussein stronghold. In Habbaniya, about 75 miles southwest of Samarra, an American soldier was killed when his convoy came under attack.

By the American forces' account, what the battle on Sunday showed is that American forces are confronting an enemy that is growing in sophistication, carrying out bigger attacks involving more fighters. Colonel Rudesheim and other officials said the attackers had apparently known the time that the American troops were planning to deliver the money to two branches of the Rafidain Bank on the eastern and western edges of the city. Capt. Andrew Deponai, one of the officers who coordinated the combat, said the insurgents "split their force in half," with 30 to 40 men positioned near each bank in "squad and team-sized elements so they could attack each bank from all sides." They set up ambush points, he said, on likely routes for the Americans, and stored explosives and bombs there. They concealed themselves in back alleys in BMW sedans, taxis and pickup trucks. It was, Captain Deponai said, "a well-planned attack."

There was considerable evidence of combat on Monday, with walls and houses across the city pock-marked with bullet holes. As for the bodies, most Iraqis interviewed around this city said they had seen only a few. Told of the American claims of great carnage, many shook their heads. American soldiers seemed convinced that the survivors had waited for the shooting to stop and carried their dead away overnight. In interviews, soldier after soldier recalled the night's events in great detail.

Specialist Sergio Silva was manning the 25-millimeter cannon atop his Bradley fighting vehicle when, he said, an Iraqi guerrilla darted from behind a wall and prepared to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. Specialist Silva said he had swung his gun around, aimed, fired and watched the enemy fighter come apart. "He just exploded," he said.

Sheik Khatan al-Salem, a Samarra town official with a decidedly anti-American bent, predicted that the battle on Sunday would ultimately prove to be something less than an American victory. "Why is the resistance increasing now?" the sheik asked. "Simply because the Americans misbehave with the people." "All their actions motivate the young people to do such acts, not because they love Saddam," he said. "They do not love Saddam. They love their country."

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