IRAQ: Chatting during a lull in fighting yesterday, the US Marines had no time to think when a mortar smashed into their vehicles in Falluja.
It sent one Marine's boots flying across the desert floor as others jumped under a truck for cover and a second round landed nearby. When they stood up, five soldiers lay wounded beside their amphibious assault vehicles, one seriously.
US forces may have made significant gains in an offensive aimed at crushing Muslim militants and Saddam Hussein loyalists. But they remain vulnerable even in positions they have captured.
"Get the medic, get the medic. It landed on their vehicles," screamed a Marine as he rushed towards the wounded men.
Minutes later, medics with latex gloves picked up one of the wounded men's boots as others looked on.
"Now you know why I'm always telling you to get your flakjackets on. Get back to what you were doing. This is Iraq," said Master Sergeant Roy Meek.
It was bound to happen. Insurgents have been firing mortars at the American positions since Monday.
Most have landed about 400 feet away, temporarily grabbing the attention of Marines in a part of Falluja where airstrikes and artillery fire make much louder noises than mortars.
A few hours before yesterday's blast, one looked at the other and said: "I swear one of those damn mortars is going to land here."
A third mortar hit the same area just after helicopters arrived to evacuate the wounded. But mortar bombs are not the only threat.
Members of the new Iraqi army, who share the position with the Americans said buildings just a few blocks away were still infested with snipers. It's also a problem in other parts of Falluja.
Fifty Iraqi civilians who were brought to the position by Iraqi forces said they had been trapped in their homes with scarce food and water since the offensive began.
"As soon as we set foot in front of our homes the snipers fire at us. We were finally able to get here when the foreign fighters were driven out of our neighbourhoods," said an Iraqi man who was still holding a wooden stick with a white flag.
The offensive is designed to crush al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Arab militant fighters, as well as other groups of insurgents holed up in the city ahead of elections scheduled for January, 2005.
Several of the Iraqi civilians, who declined to give their names for fear of reprisals, said militants from Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, had been intimidating Iraqis civilians ahead of the offensive.
"They would tell us that we had to take up arms and fight with them, or else we were infidels and God would punish us," said an elderly Iraqi man.
An Iraqi army officer, who has lost many comrades to the raging insurgency, looked at a young man and told him to tell a reporter how the Iraqi army rescued the civilians.
But the young man just recalled the foreign fighters who took over his neighbourhood and their staunch Islamic puritanism.
"All you had to do was smoke a cigarette and they would come after you and threaten you," he said.
