Town leaders in troubled Fallujah denounced the gruesome murder of four American contractors here, as imams decided to devote Friday prayers to condemn such acts considered sins in Islam.Police and paramilitary forces were deployed across Fallujah, setting up checkpoints at main entrances to the dusty town west of Baghdad, with many anticipating the harsh retaliation vowed by the US Army.
In an apparent move to ease tensions and avoid escalation, town leaders rushed to denounce Wednesday's grisly killings as residents headed to mosques for Friday weekly prayers expected to issue similar condemnation.
"The City Council held a meeting late last night to condemn the acts of mutilation of the bodies," council president Saadallah al-Rawi told AFP.
"We will distribute a statement to that effect later today," he said.
Rawi also said "imams across Fallujah have decided to make a unified Friday sermon today that will condemn the mutilation of the bodies, based on the holy Koran and the teachings of Prophet Mohammed, which prohibit them."
Many Fallujah residents expressed dismay at the mutilation of the bodies which they considered against Muslim teachings, although some justified the acts as a reaction to army raids on homes and mosques in the town.
On Thursday, the army recovered remains of the four slain Americans, after police officers gathered dismembered body parts from various locations around the town, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
The four were killed in an ambush by armed insurgents in downtown Fallujah, located in the so-called Sunni Triangle region where insurgents are leading a battle against US-led occupation forces.
Following the attack charred bodies were dismembered and publicly paraded by jubilant residents in this town located in the so-called Sunni triangle where insurgents are waging a fierce battle against US-led occupation forces.
Graphic pictures and footage of the macabre killings and mutilation filled airwaves and newspapers, shocking viewers around the world and prompting Iraqi officials to issue stern condemnations.
Iraq's interim Governing Council denounced the killings as a "savage" act that did not represent the Iraqi people.
Council member Samir Sumaidai said "what happened in Fallujah represents the worst of savage behaviour."
"What happened is very far away from the nature of Iraq and Islam," said Rosch Schaways, deputy to Kurdish leader and council member Massoud Barzani.
US officials have vowed a forceful response to the murders.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony at Baghdad's police academy on Thursday, an angry Paul Bremer, the US overseer in Iraq, said: "Their deaths will not go unpunished."
Top US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt said "we will respond. It is going to be deliberate and precise and it will be overwhelming.
"We will re-establish control and will pacify that city," he added. "It will be at the time and place of our choosing."
Replaying scenes from Fallujah, US televisions noted the similarities with the abuse meted out to the corpses of American soldiers killed in Somalia in 1993 in an ill-fated raid depicted in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
Pictures of a dead US serviceman being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu aired constantly on US television at the time, and led to the eventual evacuation of US forces from Somalia.