by Shaalan Ahmed, Jizhi Li

    BAGHDAD, Nov. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqis slammed on Friday the UnitedStates for its military campaign in the rebel-held Iraqi city ofFallujah, criticizing it as "worse than Saddam regime".

    "The US authority is worse than Saddam regime. They make us hateeven the words of freedom and democracy," a spokesman of theAssociation of Muslim Clerics (AMC) said at a rally.

    "The US forces do everything that the former regime did, fromusing internationally banned weapons against civilians tooppressing people," Mohammed Bashar al-Faiydhi told hundreds ofworshipers.

    Another member of the leading Sunni religious body read a letterfrom Fallujah, saying "the mischief of the city is beyond alllimits of human rights and norms. It's a brutal genocide."

    The dead and wounded were lying scattered in the Fallujahstreets and US snipers were shooting at everything moving includingthose trying to rescue the wounded, said the letter.

    All infrastructure installations and medical clinics weredestroyed in US bombardments and doctors and their aides were amongthe deceased, it added.

    A 36-year-old man, who declined to be identified, told Xinhuathat he felt "ashamed" that he had left Fallujah before theoffensive started from Monday and only sat at his refuge hearingnews of killing and dying.

    "I regret, for the pains are killing me, and if it's not for mysons and girls I will travel back to Fallujah to fight to the end,"he said, tears in his eyes.

    A middle-aged doctor, who also refused to be named, said he wastold by residents fleeing Fallujah that women and children had diedin doors without any apparent wounds suffered, indicating possibleuse of medical weapons.

    The doctor lingered around the makeshift refugee camps outsidethe besieged city but did not get access permission into the town,he said.

    Medicine and careful treatment were badly needed in the camps,he said. "Please, please, please help these children before theydie in despair," he deplored.

    Sunni Muslims who gathered after Friday prayers at the Um al-Qura mosque, west Baghdad, chanted "God is the greatest".

    "The resistance is controlling Mosul and all the cities to thewest of Fallujah until the Syrian borders and that Baquba andSamarra shake in the attacks of the resistance," Faiydhi said.

    Faiydhi added that 80 percent of the AMC members were detainedby US forces "because they described the US forces as occupationforces."

    In a statement released early Friday, the US military said IraqiNational Guard and US troops jointly conducted a cordon and searchin a Baghdad mosque, "capturing a large weapons cache and detainingthree clerics and 23 suspected anti-Iraqi forces."

    The operation was conducted after weapons were seen being movedinto the mosque, it said, adding that AK-47 assault rifles androcket-propelled grenades were among the confiscated.

    The US military said insurgents were using mosques to attack USand Iraqi troops and thus the religous sites became legitimatetargets for the joint forces.

    It also said there were no innocent civilians killed in theongoing operation in Fallujah, where the marines said they hadcontrolled most urban areas and were trapping the insurgents insmall pockets.

    The AMC held the interim government led by Iyad Allawi fullresponsible for the "genocide of Fallujah people by the US troopsbacked by militias of some parties in the government."

    The association has openly called for a national boycott of thegeneral elections due in January.

    US and Iraqi officials consider the upcoming voting critical forthe political process and have struggled to restore peace to pavethe way for it.

    Battles in Fallujah, a Sunni stronghold some 50 km west ofBaghdad, have raged since Monday. Hundreds have been killed andmany others wounded. Enditem