Samarra: What Really Happened?

As his convoy rounded a corner in the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra on Nov. 30, Sergeant First Class Alvin Ware had a bad feeling. In the near distance, he could see men crouching on rooftops and darting down alleyways. His fears soon proved to be well founded. As the convoy approached, he realized that some of the figures were carrying mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Before long, says Ware, 34, “they were firing in all directions.”

So, it seems, were the G.I.s. That night, safely back at their base in Baghdad, the soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade tallied their hits. They reported that they had killed 54 Iraqi fighters in what had been the bloodiest clash since the start of the U.S. postwar occupation of Iraq. The next day General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the engagement a harsh lesson for Iraqi insurgents: “They attacked and they were killed. So I think it will be instructive to them.”

But local Iraqis recall a very different scene that day. They describe heavy fighting that indiscriminately mowed down civilians. Samarra citizens contend that only eight bodies were found after the fighting, at least two of them clearly noncombatants. They estimate that 54 civilians were wounded, including some hit near a mosque as they gathered for late-afternoon prayers. Samarrans reacted with deep anger to America’s show of overwhelming firepower, which pockmarked swaths of the city with bullet holes, wrecked cars in the streets and killed and wounded many innocents. Even now, it’s impossible to judge which version is closer to the truth.

The only thing everyone agrees on is that the fighting was exceptionally fierce, revealing a higher level of organization and coordination by the insurgents than had been seen before. The G.I.s drove into synchronized attacks on opposite ends of Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad, as twin U.S. convoys escorted trucks delivering new post-Saddam currency to two city banks. The Americans were on general alert, traveling with plenty of heavy armor.

Even so, the ferocity of the fighting came as a grim surprise. The insurgents set off roadside bombs as the convoys’ M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles entered the city. Then, firing brazenly at close range, the guerrillas traded gunfire with better-armed U.S. troops for two hours and 45 minutes. The G.I.s were stunned. “Usually it seems like these guys are afraid to die for their cause,” says Captain Andrew Deponai, 29, the company commander. “This time was different.”

The whole city seemed to be engulfed in shooting. A black BMW sped down the street toward Ware’s convoy. Three men sat inside, while a fourth, dressed in black, hopped out, aimed an RPG and fired. “There was a big explosion, but it missed the tank, and the Americans fired back,” recalls Mohammed Khaled, 23, who says he watched from his food warehouse down the block. Nearby, insurgents raced into Samarra’s hospital and fled out the back doors. In pursuit, U.S. tanks crumpled some cars and shot at others. Nurses laid the wounded fighters and civilians in hospital corridors. As the second convoy reached the bank near Samarra’s mosaic-adorned mosque, Abdul Satar, 47, dragged a terrified female Iranian Shi’ite pilgrim into his bakery and slammed the door. From the window, Satar says, he watched a man dash into the street to rescue his small son, who stood immobilized by fear. “The Americans shot the man,” he claims. The child appeared unharmed.

The dispute over the battle’s body count bears echoes of Vietnam, where casualty figures were routinely inflated. The U.S. has not been giving out such numbers in Iraq, but seemed eager to publicize this battle’s hefty total. Samarra hospital officials still insist that only eight Iraqis were killed, and last Monday afternoon TIME saw just two bodies lying in the hospital morgue: an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, both with Iranian identity cards. U.S. commanders stand by numbers they say were tallied from precise after-battle reports. Besides, says Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the Army’s deputy operations director, “I can’t imagine why the enemy would want to bring a dead body to the hospital.”

–By Vivienne Walt/Samarra, with reporting by Brian Bennett/Baghdad