BAGHDAD, Oct 3 (AFP) - A grouping of senior Iraqi Sunni Muslim clerics stepped up their criticism Sunday of the deadly US-Iraqi offensive in Samarra and of US air strikes on Fallujah calling them "massacres".

They warned that bloodshed could not pave to democratic elections and threatened a possible call for jihad, or holy war, if such a "terrorist" strategy was not reversed.

"My brothers, we are facing a new massacre in Samarra," Sheikh Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, spokesman for the respected Committee of Muslim Scholars, told reporters at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque.

"It is the latest in a series of many criminal ones perpetrated by the greatest terrorist nation on the face of the earth: the United States," he said.

US and Iraqi forces regained control of the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, on Saturday after a massive joint operation from Friday against suspected foreign fighters, militants and former regime elements aimed at subduing renegade areas ahead of national elections in January 2005.

The US military said Sunday that about 150 people were killed in the operation and that about 10 percent of the casualties were civilian, but local hospital officials said the civilian toll was higher.

Faidi, flanked by two other senior members of the committee, painted a grim picture of the situation in Samarra, which he said was based on eyewitness accounts.

He said the city was besieged, residents were prevented from leaving and many were burying their dead in their gardens for fear of venturing out and being shot by what he claimed were US army snipers posted on rooftops.

The cleric then invited a resident of Samarra who managed to escape to recount some of the "horrors" he had witnessed.

"I saw with my own eyes US soldiers shoot a teenager on the street and even after the boy fell, they kept pummeling his body with bullets," said the man, who identified himself as Abu al-Qaqa, wearing a traditional Arab headscarf.

Faidi had harsh words for the Iraqi government saying it was complicit in every way with what was happening in Samarra and other Sunni rebel cities like Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

He said it was pursuing a misled and dangerous strategy to bring about democracy that if not reversed would have the opposite result and plunge the country in even more bloodshed and chaos.

"Who is going to respect elections paved by the blood of Iraqis and built on their skulls?" asked the white-turbaned sheikh. "The government is solving our problems the American way."

Faidi warned that the committee would not sit idle if operations against Iraqi cities continued.

"When we feel that the whole Iraqi people, their religion and honour are targeted, then we have no choice but to declare major jihad (holy war)," he said.

Many among Iraq's Sunni Arab population look up to the committee as an arbitrator in their affairs.

Sunnis, who make up almost 30 percent of Iraq's population of 26 million, were the dominant force under the previous regime of Saddam Hussein.

The committee, which is headed by Sheikh Hareth al-Dhari, also exerts influence over some elements of the insurgency in Sunni cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and Samarra.

The clerics have so far been harsh critics of US policy, refusing to participate in the transition process and regarding the government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as a mere tool of Washington's domination of Iraq.


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