chilling

Under US noses, brutal insurgents rule Sunni citadel

Guardian gains rare access to Iraqi town and finds it fully in control of
'mujahideen' Omer Mahdi in Haditha and Rory Carroll in BaghdadMonday August 22,
2005 The Guardian
The executions
are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small
crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made
available on DVD in the market the same afternoon.
One of last week's
victims was a young man in a black tracksuit. Like the others he was left on his
belly by the blue iron railings at the bridge's southern end. His severed head
rested on his back, facing Baghdad. Children cheered when they heard that the
next day's spectacle would be a double bill: two decapitations. A man named
Watban and his brother had been found guilty of spying.
With so many alleged
American agents dying here Haqlania bridge was renamed Agents' bridge. Then a
local wag dubbed it Agents' fridge, evoking a mortuary, and that name has stuck.
A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week
established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted:
Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent
citadel.