More US-Shootings on Iraq Protestors

Another Iraqi March Ends In Gunfire

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/iraq/main541815.shtml

For the second time this week U.S. soldiers opened fire Wednesday on anti-American demonstrators in Fallujah, a town west of Baghdad, with apparently deadly results.

"...Meanwhile, the White House announced that President Bush will address the nation at 9 p.m. ET Thursday night from aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. He will tell a live audience of sailors and marines that the major combat operation in Iraq has ended, and the next phase, rebuilding Iraq, has begun.

So far, the toughest part of that postwar effort has been restoring security.

The gunfire in Fallujah came less than 48 hours after a shooting there during a demonstration Monday night that hospital officials said killed 13 Iraqis. The demonstration on Wednesday was protesting the earlier deaths.

An Army officer said soldiers in a convoy passing demonstrators in Fallujah were shot at, and then returned fire. The city's mayor said two people were killed and 14 wounded in the clash..."

In other developments:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld became the first top Bush administration official to visit Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster. "Iraq belongs to you," he said in a message taped for radio and television broadcast to the Iraqi people. "The coalition has no intention of owning or running Iraq."

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