Iraqi Civilians Caught in Crossfire of Guerrilla War

FALLUJA, Iraq Friday, Sept. 12, was much the same as most days here.

Under a cloudless sky, children swam in the Euphrates. Near the highway to Baghdad, men illicitly sold gasoline to drivers unwilling to wait at the town's crowded stations.

Sunni Muslim worshipers celebrated the holiest day of Islam's week by filling the mosques that speckle this city. And a convoy of American soldiers rumbled down a road two miles west of town, past a low cinder-block house where Manal Turky, 16, watched television in a small dark room and Dunia Hamid, her 2-year-old cousin, played.

Just after 3 p.m., someone ambushed that convoy with a roadside bomb. And in the hours that followed, someone almost certainly an American soldier, if the accounts of family members are accurate shot and killed Dunia and wounded Manal, along with three other members of their family.

Maj. Anthony Aguto, a commander of the unit involved in the ambush, said the unit was investigating the incident and was unaware of any civilian deaths.

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