US lashes out in Fallujah as new leader Allawi defies insurgents

[reprehensor]

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

26 June 2004

The US military angrily lashed out yesterday with an air strike on an alleged "safehouse" of insurgents in Fallujah believed to be behind co-ordinated attacks across Iraq.

As the insurgents attacked in cities across central Iraq this week, killing more than 100 people, Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, vowed that "we are going to defeat them. We are going to crush them."

It will not be easy to do. By making co-ordinated assaults on police stations and government buildings, the guerrillas have shown that they are far better organised and more numerous than they were six months ago.

The attacks also had the obvious intention of spoiling the so-called handover of power by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi interim government led by Mr Allawi on 30 June.

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